Robert Lopez

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Lopez (right), with songwriting partner Jeff Marx (left).

Robert Lopez (born February 23, 1975) is an American composer and lyricist of musicals best known for co-writing the Broadway musical Avenue Q, for which he won a Tony Award.

1 Biography
- 1.1 Early life and career
- 1.2 Personal life
2 References
3 External links

[edit] Biography

[edit] Early life and career

Lopez grew up in the Greenwich Village neighborhood of New York City, and was interested in songwriting from an early age (he wrote his first song at 7.)^[1] He attended Hunter College High School and received a B.A. in English from Yale University, where he was a member of the Yale Spizzwinks(?).

Original playbill for Avenue Q.

In 1998, Lopez attended the well-known BMI Lehman Engel Musical Theater Workshop, where he met another aspiring songwriter, Jeff Marx. Their first project together, Kermit, Prince of Denmark, a spec Muppet movie very loosely based on Hamlet, won the Kleban Award for lyrics, though The Jim Henson Company rejected the script, saying it didn't have enough "kid appeal."^[1]

In 1999, the the pair began work on Avenue Q, a stage musical that used Sesame Street-esque puppets to deal with adult themes and ideas (Lopez and Marx collaborate on both the music and lyrics.) The show, Lopez's first professional experience,^[2] played Off-Broadway before transferring to the John Golden Theater on Broadway in July 2003, where it proved both a critical and popular success. It won the 2004 Tony Award for Best Musical, and Lopez and Marx's musical score earned them a 2004 Tony Award. The musical's Grammy Award-nominated Original Cast Album has sold over 150,000 copies to date.

In early 2006, Lopez collaborated with his brother, Billy Lopez, on several episodes of the Nickelodeon series Wonder Pets. In January 2007, a musical adaptation of the Disney/Pixar film Finding Nemo, which Lopez co-wrote with Kristen Anderson-Lopez, opened at the Disney's Animal Kingdom theme park.

Lopez and Marx wrote four songs for a musical episode of the NBC sitcom Scrubs that aired on January 18, 2007. Lopez is currently working on a new musical project with Matt Stone and Trey Parker, the creators of South Park^[2] (interestingly, in 2003, Lopez had mentioned that South Park had been a partial inspiration for Avenue Q.)^[1]

[edit] Personal life

While at the BMI Lehman Engel Musical Theater Workshop, Lopez met and began dating lyricist Kristen Anderson. In a cash-strapped post-college period that recalls the storyline of Avenue Q's Princeton and Kate Monster, the pair "live[d] in Astoria, Queens, [drove] a 1989 Buick and survive[d] on fast food."^[3] The couple married in 2003 and live in Manhattan with their daughter, Katie (b. 2005.)