Creative Team Announced for

SOMEWHERE IN TIME,

A New Musical 

Ken Davenport, producer of the Broadway hits Blithe Spirit and Speed-the-Plow, and the Off-Broadway hits Altar Boyz, My First Time, and The Awesome 80s Prom, and a recent Tony Award nominee for Will Ferrell’s You’re Welcome America, today proudly announces that Leslie Arden will write the score for the new musical, Somewhere in Time (www.somewhereintimethemusical.com), based on the novel by Richard Matheson and the Universal film, which starred Christopher Reeve and Jane Seymour. Mr. Matheson and Mr. Davenport will collaborate on the book. Stafford Arima, currently represented by Altar Boyz at New World Stages, will direct.

Leslie Arden has had a varied background as a writer, composer, lyricist, performer and director.  She’s written over a dozen musicals, including the critically acclaimed and multi-award winning The House of Martin Guerre and the Chalmer’s Award winning The Happy Prince, which is based on the short story by Oscar Wilde.  Leslie’s musical adaptation of Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing, The Boys Are Coming Home, was produced by Chicago’s American Musical Theatre Project in Chicago in August, 2006, and showcased by The National Alliance of Musical Theater in New York City later that year.  Leslie wrote the music for Toronto’s Canadian Stage Company’s productions of The Beard of Avon and It’s a Wonderful Life (in which she was also a performer).  Currently, Leslie is composing the music for the Stratford Shakespeare Festival’s production of Cyrano De Bergerac starring Colm Feore, and her new musical, The Princess and the Handmaiden, is scheduled to premiere at Toronto’s The Lorraine Kimsa Theatre for Young People in the fall of 2009. Finally, Leslie’s also at work on a contemporary musical adaptation of Moll Flanders.

Stafford Arima most recently directed The Tin Pan Alley Rag for Roundabout Theatre Company; the West End premiere of Ragtime (recognized with 8 Olivier Award nominations including Best Director); The Princess and the Black-Eyed Pea (San Diego Rep.); Candide (San Francisco Symphony); Marry Me a Little (Cincinnati Playhouse); The Secret Garden (World AIDS Day concert); Bowfire (World Tour/PBS television special); Esther Demsack (SPF Festival); Bright Lights, Big City (Prince Music Theater); Guys and Dolls (Paper Mill Playhouse); A Tribute to Stephen Sondheim (Boston Pops); Ace (The Old Globe); Chef’s Theater (The Supper Club); Rags – In Concert (Nokia Theater); Abyssinia (Goodspeed Musicals); Total Eclipse (TSP Studio Theatre, Toronto); and Children’s Letters to God (Off-Broadway). His Broadway credits as associate director include A Class Act and Seussical.   

Richard Matheson is an author and screenwriter, typically of fantasy, horror, and science fiction. Born in Allendale, New Jersey to Norwegian immigrant parents, Matheson was raised in Brooklyn and graduated from Brooklyn Technical High School in 1943. He then entered the military and spent World War II as an infantry soldier. In 1949 he earned his bachelor's degree in journalism from the University of Missouri and moved to California in 1951. He married in 1952 and has four children, three of whom (Chris, Richard Christian, and Ali Matheson) are writers of fiction and screenplays. Among his novels and films are Someone is Bleeding (1953); Fury on Sunday (1953); I Am Legend (1954), filmed as The Last Man on Earth, The Omega Man & I Am Legend; The Shrinking Man (1956), filmed as The Incredible Shrinking Man; also the basis of the film The Incredible Shrinking Woman; A Stir of Echoes (1958), filmed as Stir of Echoes; Ride the Nightmare (1959), The Beardless Warriors (1960); Comedy of Terrors with Elsie Lee (1964), filmed as The Comedy of Terrors; Hell House (1971), filmed as The Legend of Hell House; The Night Stalker with Jeff Rice (1972); The Night Strangler (1973); Bid Time Return (1975), filmed as Somewhere in Time and subsequently reissued under that title; What Dreams May Come (1978), filmed as What Dreams May Come; The Gunfight (1993); 7 Steps to Midnight (1993); Shadow on the Sun (1994); Now You See It... (1995); The Memoirs of Wild Bill Hickock (1996); Passion Play (2000); Hunger and Thirst (2000); Camp Pleasant (2001); Abu and the 7 Marvels (2002); Hunted Past Reason (2002); Come Fygures, Come Shadowes (2003); and Woman (2006), among others. TV credits include "The Twilight Zone" (16 episodes), "Ghost Story" (22 episodes), as well as "The Outer Limits," "Combat," "Night Gallery," and "Star Trek," among many others.

Recently hailed as the “P.T. Barnum of Off-Broadway” by the New York Times for his unique 21st century marketing strategies, Ken Davenport is becoming widely recognized as one of the most innovative theatre producers today. Ken’s visionary tech-savvy was also recently featured on a national commercial for Apple’s iPhone and he was named one of Crain's “Forty Under 40” in 2008 as a result of his fresh ideas and unprecedented success. Ken’s impressive Broadway and Off-Broadway production slate includes Oleanna, Speed the Plow, You’re Welcome America, Blithe Spirit, Altar Boyz, The Awesome 80s Prom and My First Time.  Ken is currently the only independent producer to have three shows running simultaneously Off-Broadway: Altar Boyz, The Awesome 80s Prom, and My First Time. Combined, his productions have grossed more than $100 million worldwide and are being produced internationally in 25 countries including Germany, Mexico, France, and Korea. Ken is the author of The Producers Perspective (www.TheProducersPerspective.com), his popular blog where he gives his opinion on everything relating to Broadway and beyond. Ken’s current projects include, in addition to adapting the novel and film Somewhere in Time into a Broadway musical, a revival of Romeo and Juliet, developing a new social networking site for the Broadway community called BroadwaySpace.com and a documentary film about Red Wanting Blue—one of the top unsigned rock bands in the country. Ken received the 2008 Spirit of Theatre Award from Theatre Resources Unlimited and the 2003 Acclaim Screenwriting Award for his television pilot, “I.C.A.”. He is currently senior member of The Off-Broadway Alliance, a town-hall like forum for dialogue amongst the Off-Broadway community at large, as well as a member of The Broadway League (where he serves on the Digital Task Force) as well as The Off-Broadway League of Theatres and Producers. 

For more information, visit www.DavenportTheatrical.com