GAYDEN WREN

Gayden Wren is a New York-based writer, playwright and director, best known as the author of a critically lauded study of the operas of Gilbert & Sullivan, A Most Ingenious Paradox: The Art of Gilbert & Sullivan (Oxford University Press, 2001).

As a playwright, his credits include As If; Baseball, Sex and Other Facts of Life; Ernest; I.D.; Moonlight and Midnight; A Night on the Tomb; Swords and Frenchmen; Tales from the Bible; Two for the Show and Very Truly Yours, Gilbert & Sullivan. He has collaborated on musicals with the composers Vance Lehmkuhl, Paul Nordquist and Paul V. Patanella. His greatest hit to date, however, paired him with a composer who died 61 years before his birth: Since its debut in 1994, A Gilbert & Sullivan Christmas Carol has been produced nearly 50 times in five different countries.

He has directed nearly 100 plays, specializing in his own work and in the works of Gilbert & Sullivan, which he has directed for the Gilbert & Sullivan Players of Oberlin College, the International Gilbert & Sullivan Festival, Troupers Light Opera and, above all, the Gilbert & Sullivan Light Opera Company of Long Island.

Wren is also a prolific journalist, having written hundreds of pieces for The New York Times Syndicate, for which he has served as entertainment editor since 1995, and other publications.  He was conducted celebrity interviews with such stars as Edward Albee, Victor Borge, Mario Cuomo, Rudolph Giuliani, Helen Hayes, Keith Hernandez, Ed Koch, George McGovern, Arthur Miller, Tommy Tune and Wellington Mara.

He is currently at work on a study of The Mikado and a mystery novel.