Creative Team

Sean Gao

Composer & Artistic director

Named as Musical America’s Top 30 Professionals of the Year in 2021, Sean Gao is one of the world's most successful presenters, producers, composers, and pedagogues. He has solo performed violin for many world leaders and with 100 plus orchestras worldwide. As the Trustees Distinguished Professor of Music at the University of Delaware, Mr. Gao is the founding director of the Master Players Concert Series & Festival. Shanghai Sonatas - the new musical conceptualized and composed by Sean is being developed by Tony-winning producers and touring as a concert production. (Mr. Gao is represented by the California Artists Management)

Alan Goodson

Book Writer

Alan Goodson is a playwright, translator, lyricist, actor, and director based in Los Angeles. His plays have been presented at new play festivals around the country. In addition to his original work, he translates plays and lyrics from German, Hungarian, and Swedish into English. As an actor he has performed in many theatres throughout California, as well as in Europe; and has been seen in over a dozen American and European films. His activities as a director have been centered in Vienna, where he has directed in diverse genres, from clown theatre to chamber opera. He is a longtime member of the Dramatists Guild, Actors’ Equity Association, and SAG-AFTRA.

Joyce Hill Stoner

Lyricist

Joyce Hill Stoner has written lyrics or music for 22 musical theatre productions including I’ll Die if I Can’t Live Forever, (Off-Broadway), which was purchased by Samuel French and called “the best mini-musical in town” by The New York Times. Her other productions include Turn Back Columbus (Please Don’t Discover Us!) (Toronto); Murder at the Last Resort (Cleveland); in NYC: 1-900-THE-SHOW, As She Dreams It, and The Roswell Follies: An Alien Revue (NYC Fringe Festival). Additional musicals concerned Whistler, N.C. Wyeth, C.W. Peale, women’s suffrage, and the underground railroad. She is a member of the Dramatists Guild and was in the Lehman Engel BMI workshop in the 1970s.

Chongren Fan

Stage Director

Chongren Fan is a New York-based bilingual director who’s from Shanghai, China. He is the Artistic Director of Yangtze Repertory Theatre and Artist-in-Residence at Pan Asian Rep. Recent productions: Damon Chua’s The Emperor’s Nightingale (Theatre Row, 2019 OBA Award nomination); Friedrich Dürrenmatt’s Romulus the Great(TBG Theatre); Frances Ya-Chu Cowhig’s 410[GONE](TFTNC); Marie Jones’ Stones in His Pockets(Shanghai Dramatic Arts Centre). He has been a Jonathan Alper Directing Fellow at Manhattan Theatre Club, Resident Artist at Mabou Mines, and guest lecturer at Barnard College and Yale School of Drama.

Zhuoyi Wang

History and Comparative Literature Advisor

Zhuoyi Wang is Professor of East Asian Languages and Literatures (Chinese) at Hamilton College, the author of Revolutionary Cycles in Chinese Cinema, 1951-1979 (Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), the co-editor of Maoist Laughter (awarded 2020 Choice’s Outstanding Academic Title), and the co-editor of Teaching Film from the People’s Republic of China (the Modern Language Association, forthcoming). He has published over 30 articles and reviews in such English-language and Chinese-language scholarly journals, edited volumes, magazines, and new media outlets as Arts, China Review International, Chinese Literature Today, Chinese Literature and Thought Today, Cinema and TV Culture, Illuminating Empirical Data with Theory, Journal of Beijing Film Academy, Journal of Chinese Cinemas, Journal of Cinema and Media Studies, Phoenix Weekly, Literature and Art Studies, Literature and Culture, Prism: Theory and Modern Chinese Literature, Taiwan Lit, and WHYNOT. He has given over 100 invited talks and lectures on Chinese-language and Hollywood cinemas as well as pedagogical use of films for institutions and organizations in the US, the UK, Canada, mainland China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan.