Mark Levenson, a member of the Dramatists Guild of America

Dramatists Guild of America

The Dramatists Guild of America is a professional organization for playwrights, composers, and lyricists working in the U.S. theatre market.Membership as an Associate Member is open to any person having written at least one stage play. Active Members are playwrights who have had at least one play...

, is currently a musical director for The Second City Detroit

The Second City Detroit

The Second City Detroit is a comedy theatre located in the Detroit suburb Novi, Michigan. It is the Second City's third mainstage theatre in North America following the Second City Chicago and Toronto. Originally established in September 1993 in downtown Detroit, Michigan, the theatre relocated to...

 (located in Novi

Novi, Michigan

Novi is a city in Oakland County in the U.S. state of Michigan. As of the 2010 census, the population was 55,224, an increase over the 2000 census count of 47,386. The city is located approximately northwest of the center of Detroit, and northeast of the center of Ann Arbor. The city is located...

, Michigan

Michigan

Michigan is a U.S. state located in the Great Lakes Region of the United States of America. The name Michigan is the French form of the Ojibwa word mishigamaa, meaning "large water" or "large lake"....

.). Levenson helped open Second City Detroit in 1993. In addition to his work with The Second City Detroit, Levenson scored the hit Comedy Central

Comedy Central

Comedy Central is an American cable television and satellite television channel that carries comedy programming, both original and syndicated....

 series, Strangers with Candy

Strangers with Candy

Strangers with Candy is a television series produced by Comedy Central. It first aired on April 7, 1999, and concluded its third and final season on October 2, 2000. Its timeslot was Sundays at 10 p.m....

. He has also written music for shows on MTV

MTV

MTV, formerly an initialism of Music Television, is an American network based in New York City that launched on August 1, 1981. The original purpose of the channel was to play music videos guided by on-air hosts known as VJs....

, VH-1, NBC

NBC

The National Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network and former radio network headquartered in the GE Building in New York City's Rockefeller Center with additional major offices near Los Angeles and in Chicago...

 and scored productions at both Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts

Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts

Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts is a complex of buildings in the Lincoln Square neighborhood of New York City's Upper West Side. Reynold Levy has been its president since 2002.-History and facilities:...

 and John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts

John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts

The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts is a performing arts center located on the Potomac River, adjacent to the Watergate complex in Washington, D.C...

. Levenson composed music for David Sedaris

David Sedaris

David Sedaris is a Grammy Award-nominated American humorist, writer, comedian, bestselling author, and radio contributor....

's two Off Broadway shows and numerous recording projects. He recently toured the country with Stephen Colbert

Stephen Colbert

Stephen Tyrone Colbert is an American political satirist, writer, comedian, television host, and actor. He is the host of Comedy Central's The Colbert Report, a satirical news show in which Colbert portrays a caricatured version of conservative political pundits.Colbert originally studied to be an...

, Amy Sedaris

Amy Sedaris

Amy Louise Sedaris is an American actress, author, and comedian. She is known for playing the character Jerri Blank in the Comedy Central television series Strangers with Candy. Sedaris regularly collaborates with her older brother, humorist and author David Sedaris...

 and Paul Dinello

Paul Dinello

Paul Dinello is an American actor, comedian, writer, director, and an alumnus of Chicago-based The Second City, Improv Institute, and Annoyance Theatre...

 in their production of Wigfield

Wigfield

Wigfield: The Can Do Town That Just May Not is a satirical novel by comedians Amy Sedaris, Paul Dinello, and Stephen Colbert, three of the four creators of the Comedy Central show Strangers with Candy. It was first published on May 7, 2003 by Hyperion Books.The book tells the story of a small town...

, which concluded its run at the U.S. Comedy Arts Festival

U.S. Comedy Arts Festival

The Comedy Festival, formerly known as the US Comedy Arts Festival, is a comedy festival held each year in Las Vegas, Nevada. From its 1985 inception to 2007, it was held annually at the Wheeler Opera House in Aspen, Colorado...

 in Aspen

Aspen, Colorado

The City of Aspen is a Home Rule Municipality that is the county seat and the most populous city of Pitkin County, Colorado, United States. The United States Census Bureau estimates that the city population was 5,804 in 2005...

, Colorado

Colorado

Colorado is a U.S. state that encompasses much of the Rocky Mountains as well as the northeastern portion of the Colorado Plateau and the western edge of the Great Plains...

.

Levenson scored Carl Reiner

Carl Reiner

Carl Reiner is an American actor, film director, producer, writer and comedian. He has won nine Emmy Awards and one Grammy Award during this career...

's original children's album, Tell Me a Scary Story and also the Dr. Seuss

Dr. Seuss

Theodor Seuss Geisel was an American writer, poet, and cartoonist most widely known for his children's books written under the pen names Dr. Seuss, Theo LeSieg and, in one case, Rosetta Stone....

 CD series starring Kelsey Grammer

Kelsey Grammer

Allen Kelsey Grammer is an American actor and comedian. He is most widely known for his two-decade portrayal of psychiatrist Dr. Frasier Crane on the sitcoms Cheers and Frasier...

 and Jason Alexander

Jason Alexander

Jay Scott Greenspan , better known by his professional name of Jason Alexander, is an American actor, writer, comedian, television director, producer, and singer. He is best known for his role as George Costanza on the television series Seinfeld, appearing in the sitcom from 1989 to 1998...

. He recently scored his first radio play starring Dustin Hoffman

Dustin Hoffman

Dustin Lee Hoffman is an American actor with a career in film, television, and theatre since 1960. He has been known for his versatile portrayals of antiheroes and vulnerable characters....

. Levenson served as musical director for the New York avant-garde improv company, Burn Manhattan, and has composed and produced four musicals.

Before coming to The Second City Detroit, Levenson spent eight years as a composer at The Second City Chicago, where he wrote the scores for six shows (including the musicals The Rate of Falling, Those Who Are Stronger, and A Life In The Day). Levenson's work has been produced in Norway

Norway

Norway , officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic unitary constitutional monarchy whose territory comprises the western portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula, Jan Mayen, and the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard and Bouvet Island. Norway has a total area of and a population of about 4.9 million...

 and China

China

Chinese civilization may refer to:* China for more general discussion of the country.* Chinese culture* Greater China, the transnational community of ethnic Chinese.* History of China* Sinosphere, the area historically affected by Chinese culture...

.

External links

• Second City Detroit Mainstage