Biography

Timothy Allen McDonald

Timothy Allen McDonald is an award-winning playwright (Roald Dahl's Willy Wonka, The Musical Adventures of Flat Stanley, Jim Henson's Emmet Otter, Roald Dahl's James and the Giant Peach) adaptor of over 65 musicals (highlights include Guys and Dolls JR., Getting to Know…The Sound of Music, The Wizard of Oz, and Les Miserables).

McDonald is also an accomplished director (Dear Edwina produced by multi-Tony award winner Daryl Roth, and The Phantom Tollbooth at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts) and a leading authority on musical theater education. In 1996 McDonald was recruited by Freddie Gershon to develop Music Theatre International's Education Division, working side-by-side with theatrical greats including Cameron Mackintosh, Stephen Sondheim, Arthur Laurents, Stephen Flaherty, Lynn Ahrens, Stephen Schwartz and Sheldon Harnick to create age-appropriate adaptations of musicals. In 1997 McDonald founded iTheatrics to continue and expand the work he began at MTI by developing educational musical theatre adaptations and resources for Tams-Witmark, Rodgers and Hammerstein, and Samuel French. McDonald is the founder of the Junior Theater Festival, the world's largest festival exclusively dedicated to young people performing musical theater which is held annually in Atlanta, GA over the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday weekend. Believing that every child everywhere should have access to quality arts programs, Tim has developed several nationwide initiatives that build sustainable musical theater programs in underserved schools. These programs include NBC's Smash Make A Musical, Educational Theatre Association's JumpStart Theater, New York City's Department of Education's Shubert Foundation/MTI Broadway Junior Program, and The President's Committee on the Arts and the Humanities' Turnaround Arts Initiative. Tim has had the unique honor of seeing Roald Dahl's Willy Wonka performed at the White House for President and Mrs. Bush and directing Sarah Jessica Parker and a troupe of the most wonderful girls at the first-ever White House Talent Show for President and Mrs. Obama. For more information check out iTheatrics.com.

Roald Dahl’s James and the Giant Peach

Directed by Elissa Russell
Music Direction by Kailee Ash-Ray
Choreography by Grace Asaro

Words and Music by Benj Pasek and Justin Paul
Book by Timothy Allen McDonald
Based on the book James and the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl

When James is sent by his conniving aunts to chop down their old fruit tree, he discovers a magic potion that results in a tremendous peach... and launches a journey of enormous proportions. Suddenly, James finds himself in the center of the gigantic peach, among human-sized insects with equally oversized personalities. After it falls from the tree and rolls into the ocean, the group faces hunger, sharks and plenty of disagreements. Thanks to James' quick wit and creative thinking, the peach residents learn to live and work together as a family. The dangerous voyage is a success, but the adventure takes a whole new twist once they land on the Empire State Building.