Todd C. Gordon has served as music director for ThreePenny Opera, Into the Woods, Ragtime, Lippa’s The Wild Party, Dessa Rose, Cabaret, Gutenberg! The Musical, Bill W. and Dr. Bob, The Black Monk (reading), Side by Side by Sondheim, The Gold Rush Girls (reading), According to Tip with Ken Howard,  Sophie Tucker, The Last of the Red Hot Mamas with Mary Callanan, And the World Goes ‘Round, Rent, Little Shop of Horrors (New Repertory Theatre); H.M.S. Pinafore (The Publick Theatre); Carnival, Jacques Brel… (Gloucester Stage); Tomfoolery (Charles Play House); Sunday in the Park with George (Brandeis Theatre Co.); Gypsy, Groucho (Stoneham Theatre); The Music Man, West Side Story, Children of Eden, Working, and The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas (Emerson Stage). Todd has received two IRNE awards and five IRNE nominations for his work as musical director. When not working on shows, Todd maintains a private vocal studio in the prestigious Steinert Building in Boston.

Scott Edmiston makes his Central Square Theater directing debut, having previously directed The Nora Theatre Company’s productions  of Betrayal (2003 Elliot Norton Award Outstanding Production) and Molly Sweeney (1998) prior to the CST residency. Scott has directed more than 50 Boston-area productions at American Repertory Theatre, Lyric Stage Company, SpeakEasy Stage Company, Huntington Theatre Company, The Nora Theatre Company, Opera Boston, Boston Midsummer Opera, New Repertory Theatre, and Gloucester Stage, among others.  Highlights include Long Day’s Journey Into Night, The History Boys, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Time Stands Still, Other Desert Cities, My Name is Asher Lev , Nixon in China, Five by Tenn, Sunday in the Park with George, In the Next Room (or The Vibrator Play), A Marvelous Party, The Light in the Piazza, Happy Days, and Miss Witherspoon. Award include the 2012 Penn State Distinguished Alumni Award, 2011 Elliot Norton Prize for Sustained Excellence in Theatre 2009 Elliot Norton Award for Outstanding Director (Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, The History Boys, and The Light in the Piazza), 2009 IRNE Award for Best Director of a Musical (The Light in the Piazza), 2006 Elliot Norton Award for Outstanding Director (Five by Tenn), 2006 IRNE Award for Best Director (Five by Tenn and The Women), 2005 StageSource Theatre Hero Award, and the 1998 Elliot Norton Award for Outstanding Director (Molly Sweeney). Scott has taught at Boston University and Brown University/Trinity Rep, and is currently the director of the office of the arts at Brandeis University.

Hans Krása Born of mixed German/Czech parentage, Mr. Krása studied at the German Music Academy in Prague. Zemlinsky, his mentor, encouraged an interest in Mahler and early Schoenberg. In the 1920s, he was influenced by French music, particularly Debussy, Ravel, Les Six and Stravinsky. He travelled to Paris to study with Roussel for a few months and then to the Berlin Conservatory. His successes included Symphony taken up by Koussevitzky in Boston, and the prize-winning opera Verlobung im Traum, conducted at the German Theatre in Prague by Szell. His theatrical collaborations with Czech playwright Adolf Hoffmeister included the children’s opera Brundibar, (1938). After the Munich Pact he did not escape from Prague before the German occupation in 1939 and in 1942 he was deported to Terezín. A revised version of Brundibar received 55 performances at Terezín and was immortalized in a Nazi propaganda film. His compositions from his final years include Overture for Small Orchestra and Three Songs for baritone, clarinet, viola and cello. Mr. Krása was executed in Auschwitz concentration camp in 1944.

Adolf Hoffmeister was a poet, novelist, translator and editor. He edited one of the main Czech daily newspapers, Lidové noviny (1928-30) and the main literary paper, Literární noviny (1930-32). He was also a talented artist and caricaturist, often illustrating his own work. Hoffmeister set up an anti-fascist magazine, Simplicus, in the 1930s after the German satiric magazine Simplicissimus was banned by the Nazis. He wrote the libretto for Brundibar, with music by the Czech composer Hans Krása in 1938. Hoffmeister emigrated to France in 1939, but moved to Morocco when France fell. There, he was arrested but escaped from an internment camp and arrived in New York via Lisbon and Havana in 1941. He returned to Czechoslovakia in 1945 and worked for UNESCO. After the Communist coup in February 1948, Hoffmeister was named French ambassador by the new neo-Stalinist regime but was recalled shortly after. He then worked as a lecturer in fine art at the Academy of Applied Arts. After the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia, Hoffmeister emigrated to France once again in 1969, but decided to return in 1970. He died three years later in the Orlický mountains.