Stephen Bates
Original Musical Director
Accompanist
Arranger

  Stephen wrote music and/or lyrics for "Gratuitous Nudity," "Members Only," "Kris," "Window To The Soul" and "Naked Boys Singing!" Stephen and Mark Winkler are producers of the Original Cast Album of Naked Boys Singing! and Stephen was the accompanist for the original LA, New York (Off-Broadway) and Provincetown productions. 
  Stephen Bates wrote original music for the PBS Television series: Barney & Friends and served as musical director/conductor on: The Lion King (National Tour) 42nd Street (First National Tour), Radio City Christmas Spectacular and Meet Me In St. Louis (Broadway). 
  Stephen passed away in 2003 of AIDS related Lymphoma.

Robert Schrock
Conceiver
Co-Director

What Naked Boys Singing! song did you write?
I wrote some of the lyrics for "Gratuitous Nudity" and "Members Only" and all of the lyrics for "Kris, Look What You've Missed".

What other shows/songs have your written?
I've also written songs for the musical "Bark!"

What show are you currently working on?
I seem to always be working on Naked Boys Singing, but there's also Naked Men Singing! in the works.

What stage production of Naked Boys Singing! did you work on?
I've directed the original stage productions in Los Angeles and New York, plus 3 times in Provincetown, Key West (returning for a 2nd time in 2008), Atlanta, Oslo, Amsterdam, Vancouver and San Diego. I've also choreographed a number of those. I've acted as consultant in Sydney, Sao Paulo, Rome, Mexico City, Ft Lauderdale, Wash. D.C. and San Juan. I've seen in it Barcelona, London, Portland OR, Chicago, Houston, San Francisco and the video of Minneapolis.

How did you get involved in NBS?
I got involved in NBS by having the idea.

What is your average body temperature?
My body temperature is always too hot. It's all those naked boys!

Marie Cain

What Naked Boys Singing! song did you write?
"The Bliss of a Bris"
What other shows/songs have your written?
Show: "The Last Session"
Song: "Friendly Fire"
Show: "The Big Voice: God Or Merman"
Songs: "Where Is God?" "Beyond The Light"
What show are you currently working on?

"Too Old For The Chorus" (opening at La Mirada Sept/2007)
What stage production of Naked Boys Singing! did you work on?
Los Angeles/Celebration Theatre
How did you get involved in NBS!?
Answered prayers, I guess.
What is your average body temperature?
97.1

Shelly Markum

What Naked Boys Singing song did you write?
I wrote music for "Robert Mitchum" and "Nothing But The Radio On", and was one of the writers on "Gratuitous Nudity".
What other shows/songs have your written?
I have written shows in NYC for years, including a rock version of Babes In Toyland for Barry and Fran Weissler and the Kroffts, and also the shows Love & Shrimp, Alexander & The Terrible, Horrible, No Good Very Bad Day, Alexander Who's Not Not Not Not Not Not Going To Move, Flavia & The Dream Maker.
What show are you currently working on?
Currently working on Too Old For The Chorus.
What stage production of Naked Boys Singing! did you work on?
I worked on the original Los Angeles production of Naked Boys Singing! and also wrote an opening song for the London production.
How did you get involved in NBS?
I met Mark Winkler and these were the first songs we wrote together. What is your average body temperature?
I always look a little flushed....it's my English complexion. But I can stand a little cold, even though I've lived in California for years.
Anything else naked, singing or funny? 
  I wanted to tell my very Jewish mother about the songs I wrote for this "naked" revue, but it took a year in NYC as a hit before I did. She listened, then very seriously said, "Are they giving you royalties?" "Sure they are", I said. "Then what are you worried about?!" She had a point..... 
  Another story: my niece was having a bachelorette party for her best friend at work in New Jersey (she works for Jaguar motorcars). She called and asked if I could get tickets. Of course, I told her. So I called Martian Entertainment (by that time they were booking lots of bachelorette parties. "Of course, Shelly. We'd be glad to help you....which package would you like....the 11 inch, 8 inch or 5 inch?" I was too embarrassed to ask what the 11 inch consisted of, but I got her the eight inch, which included her girl friend's name in the lyrics of "Perky Little Porn Star From Skokie, Illinois" and seats in the front rows and a signed program in all the right places. 
  It's been a blast hearing all of the stories connected to this show. And I think the casts, the writing, and the direction have all been first rate. I'm very proud to have been involved.

David Pevsner

What Naked Boys Singing song did you write?
David wrote "The Naked Maid" and "The Perky Little Porn Star", and co-wrote "Fight the Urge".
What other shows/songs have your written?
Wrote his one man musical To Bitter and Back
Writer on Primetime Live with Diane Sawyer, the Playboy TV, and other TV show theme songs.
What show are you currently working on?
In development on a new stage show The Fancy Boys Follies - a low rent gay Ziegfeld Follies and scribed the film "Musical Comedy Whore"
What stage production of Naked Boys Singing! did you work on?
Just submitted the songs to the original production and they chose to use them...very cool.
How did you get involved in NBS?
I had just started writing songs for fun and Marty Casella told me that a producer friend of his, Bob Schrock, was putting a show together. I told him my songs were not for public consumption -too risqué - and pretty much just for my own amusement...then he told me the theme was nudity! Laid down some demos with a pianist named Michael Lavine, sent them in, and boom.
What is your average body temperature?
Way below normal...but I'm told I'm a very warm person.
Anything else naked, singing or funny?
Nothing too funny...just that it's been great being a part of this for so many years. Oh...maybe that I finally got a chance to actually audition for the show with this film, but I was told essentially...I was too old. Yeah...that was hilarious.

Mark Savage

What Naked Boys Singing! song did you write?
"Muscle Addiction", Music & Lyrics. I also wrote a song called "Stripped" that was in the initial Los Angeles Production. The song was an anti-striptease, where the character's clothes are forcibly yanked off him and tubes put in his arms, so that he's standing there naked and exposed and pathetic. This un-sexy image was a symbol of how AIDS strips you of your possessions and your humanity and was meant to make the audience feel shame and revulsion. It was cut after 6 months and even now I wonder... What was I thinking!
What other shows/songs have your written?
"The Ballad Of Little Mikey: Birth of An Activist" a gay coming-out musical and "Pinafore!" A ‘queered' version of "HMS Pinafore" set in the Gay Navy. It Won Best Musical in 2001 from the LA Weekly Theatre Awards, and Best Production at the 2003 NY Fringe Festival.
What show are you currently working on?
I've got a translation of Alphonse Daudet's melodrama "L'Arlesienne" with a score by Bizet that I'm hawking around; A Two-Character Drag Musical/Spiritual Seminar called "Psychopomp"; and a birthday party/nightclub musical called "Chez Ma Mere" that I'm going to mount in Los Angeles soon.
What stage production of Naked Boys Singing! did you work on?
I wrote two songs for the initial Los Angeles production. I wrote one song for me and "Muscle Addiction" because Bob asked me to. I was disappointed at the time that Bob didn't ask me to write the whole show, since we had just had a hit musical together and I wanted so much to try out my avant-garde, audience-alienation theories. Imagine a whole show full of gut churning black humor, nasty insincerity, and screeching diatribes. "Cabaret", but naked, with no jokes or story. It would have been so beautiful.
How did you get involved in NBS!?
Bob was the artistic director of the Celebration Theatre in Los Angeles, and chose my show "The Ballad Of Little Mikey: Birth of an Activist" to be the first musical in his season. "Mikey" features a big musical number set in a men's room, where the characters sing in their underwear with their pants around their ankles. Bob commented at the time that with so many gay shows around with nudity thrown in just to sell tickets, it was refreshing to do a show where the stripping served a dramatic purpose. That was one thing he stressed in his first season as Artistic Director of the Celebration Theatre, artistic integrity and no gratuitous nudity.
What is your average body temperature?
How did you know I've got a thermometer in right now? There is no "average" for me. I run hot or I run cold and my mood reflects it. About twice a day I'll spike hot and go into a senseless rage or laugh uncontrollably. Then I'll sink down into a frigid daze for a few hours. The explanation I got was that I have too much yellow bile or my chi gets stuck at my spleen. I don't know what it means but I'm told it's very serious.

Binyumen ("Ben") Schaechter

What Naked Boys Singing! song did you write?
"Jack's Song", which is, of course, but a "code" title for the actual hook of the song...
What other shows/songs have your written?
3 musicals DOUBLE IDENTITY, THE WILD SWANS and DINNER AT EIGHT and in three additional revues PETS!, THAT'S LIFE!, and TOO JEWISH?
What show are you currently working on?
KINAHORA TO KUNI-AYLAND, is a musical revue of songs about the Jewish experience in America. I'm the conductor of the outstanding JEWISH PEOPLE'S PHILHARMONIC CHORUS and is musical director of the PRIPETSHIK SINGERS.

What stage production of Naked Boys Singing! did you work on?
None.
How did you get involved in NBS!?
I was contacted by one Bob Schrock about including my song "Lookin' at Me", as it had been such a hit in the "Gay 90s Musical". I offered my humble opinion that I didn't think the same audience would laugh so hard at the song seeing the same song in the same theatre in the same year. He was unperturbed, and I had another song - a song that had been deemed "too risqué" in Dallas. A week or two later, I get a message on my answering machine informing me he loves it, and it ended up being the song that people go out humming at the intermission. No one remembers the "title", "Jack's Song", but boy, do they remember the song... 

What is your average body temperature?
The nerve of you, insulting my body temperature by calling it "average"! :-)

Rayme Sciaroni

What Naked Boys Singing song did you write? "Window to Window" music and lyrics and "Fight the Urge" with David Pevsner.
What other shows/songs have your written?
"Dance With Me Santa", "A Quiet Kind of Christmas". Various songs for cabaret singers as well as a musical revue called The Gym with lyricist, Margee Forman.
What show are you currently working on?
The first American/Chinese collaboration of a musical theatre piece, a full length musical entitled Corporate Circus which will be performed at The Shanghai Theater Academy in China this coming September.
What stage production of Naked Boys Singing! did you work on?
My two songs were there from the very beginning in Los Angeles where it was created. I did contribute to the Washington, D.C. production on a song called "Hey Mr. Ashcroft" with lyrics by Bob Schrock and Mark Winkler and "Work of Art" with lyrics by Bob Schrock that was included in the European tour.
How did you get involved in NBS?
Living in New York, David Pevsner asked if he could come over to record a couple of songs he was submitting for a musical in L.A. He suggested I may want to submit some material to it as well. Thus, was the beginning of my introduction to NBS!
What is your average body temperature?
This is important!!! I vary between 97.5 to 98.6!
Anything else naked, singing or funny?
I love the fact that Naked Boys Singing! has become so much more than what I had originally thought. I love the fact of all of these wonderful men who have set foot on the stage for this show all over the world baring their all, and showing no shame for it, nor making excuses for it. I am proud of my contribution toward this production, and highly honor and celebrate all who have been involved with this wonderful, sexy, tantalizing, humorous, thought provoking, FUN journey!

Mark Winkler

What Naked Boys Singing song did you write?
"Nothing But the Radio On", "Robert Mitchum" and a part of "Gratuitous Nudity."
What other shows/songs have your written? 
  I have had my songs recorded by everyone from Liza Minnelli, Dianne Reeves, Randy Crawford and David Benoit among others. 9 CDs of my own out as jazz singer/writer, including the recent -"Mark Winkler sings Bobby Troup" and "The Best of Mark Winkler on Varese Sarabande." 
  I've had songs in Bark! - coming to off-Broadway this spring and my musical, "Too Old for the Chorus" (which I wrote with two other Naked Boys Singing! writers Marie Cain and Shelly Markham) just concluded a 6th month run in San Diego. It will be opening the new season at the La Mirada Performing Center for the Arts on Sept. 9th of 2007.
What show are you currently working on? 
  The show I'm currently working on is a Gay jazz film noir musical called "Play It Cool," which had a successful run in Los Angeles this past year and has been nominated for a GLAAD Award for best show in Los Angeles of 2006.
What stage production of Naked Boys Singing! did you work on? 
  My songs have been in all the stage productions of NBS!. I also wrote about a half dozen other songs for Naked Boys Singing! that were especially written for a specific city. I wrote "Rockin' on the Rock" for San Francisco, "A Little Yankee Ass" for London, "Hey Mr. Ashcroft" for Washington D.C. and my fave, "Everything is Bigger in Texas" for Dallas. I wrote these with my NBS! cohorts, Shelly Markham, Marie Cain and Rayme Sciaroni.
How did you get involved in NBS? 
  I got involved in NBS! because my wonderful partner, Richard Del Belso, has been the show's creator, Bob Schrock's best friend, since the 60s. We were all having dinner one balmy summer night in ‘97 (when Clinton was still prez- sigh) when Bob asked me to write a song for the show. I knew from the getgo with that title is was going to be a hit, and said yes! But being a Jewish Boy, I knew very little about nudity. I even sleep in three pieces of attire. But somehow I plumbed the very depths of my soul and realized I wasn't that fond of the current gay images of guys who'd spent far too much time at the Gym- and wrote Robert Mitchum (so beefy, yet masculine) Bob Schrock loved it-- and then I came up with the idea of Nothing But the Radio On. The rest is show Biz history (at least in tiny corner of it).
Anything else naked, singing or funny? 
  I've learned so much about nudity from being associated with all the different stage productions of the show. I've been in naked prayer circles, fluffed chilled weenies with hair dryers and seen excited cast members get a little too pumped up for their own good. I remember an early performance in Los Angeles where many members of the audience decided to bring binoculars to see the boys "talents" better - in a 64-seat theatre! I've also sat next to drunken bachelorette party girls from Jersey, not pretty. 
  When co-producing the cast CD of Naked Boys Singing! we couldn't figure out why the boys weren't singing better until we had them sing in the studio naked. They'd grown more comfortable that way-- and from the moment their drawers dropped they sang great!
But in a weird way, it's made me a lot more comfortable in my own skin and next to the skin of others, especially if they're 25 and gorgeous! 
  Just a note to say thanks to Mr. Bob Schrock who came up with the title, wrote some of the songs and had the concept in his head way before opening night of this wonderful show. He really started me in the musical theatre- and has been nothing but encouraging and great!

Bruce Vilanch

Bruce is an American comedy writer who caught the public eye when he became a wisecracking regular on the revamped Hollywood Squares with Whoopi Goldberg. Vilanch has provided topical joke material for a number of awards show hosts, notably Billy Crystal at the Academy Awards. He commands high fees for emergency Hollywood script rewrites. In 2005 he starred on Broadway as Edna Turnblad in the musical Hairspray.

Plus...

Perry Hart
Jim Morgan
Trance Thompson

Credits

"Gratuitous Nudity"
Music and Lyrics by Stephen Bates
Additional Lyrics by Robert Schrock & Mark Winkler
Additional Music by Shelly Markham

"The Naked Maid"
Music & Lyrics by David Pevsner

"The Bliss Of Bris"
Music & Lyrics by Marie Cain

"Window to Window"
Music & Lyrics by Rayme Sciaroni

"Fight the Urge"
Lyrics by David Pevsner
Music by David Pevsner and Rayme Sciaroni

"Robert Mitchum"
Lyrics by Mark Winkler
Music by Shelly Markham

"Jack's Song"
Lyrics Jim Morgan
Music by Ben Schaechter

"Members Only"
Lyrics by Stephen Bates & Robert Schrock
Music by Stephen Bates

"Perky Little Porn Star"
Music & Lyrics by David Pevsner

"Nothin' But the Radio On"
Lyrics by Mark Winkler
Music by Shelly Markham

"Kris Look What You've Missed"
Lyrics by Robert Schrock
Music by Stephen Bates

"Muscle Addiction"
Music & Lyrics by Mark Savage

"The Entertainer"
Music & Lyrics by Trance Thompson and Perry Hart

"Window to Window"
(reprise)
Music & Lyrics by Rayme Sciaroni

"Window to the Soul"
Music & Lyrics by Stephen Bates

"Finale"
(Montage)
Music & Lyrics by Stephen Bates

"Naked Boys Singing"
(Bows)
Music & Lyrics by Stephen Bates