Once Upon A Mattress Creative

Artistic Director of Rosebud CTC & Director of Once Upon A Mattress

Holly Rose

Holly is thrilled to be able to work with such amazingly talented theatre artists and volunteers here at Rosebud! Some of Holly's credits include performing in A Narrow Bed (Wings Theatre, NYC), dancing alongside Smashmouth (Radio City Music Hall, NYC) and playing “Benten” in the World Premiere of The Kyogen Rope (O’Malley Theatre, Chicago). You may have seen her locally as Aunt Rose in Wild Mushrooms (Renton Civic Theatre) or as Gabriella in Boeing Boeing (Tacoma Little Theatre). Some local directing credits outside of Rosebud include I Hate Hamlet (Knutzen Family Theatre), If Spiders Made Honey (Burien Little Theatre), and A Very Lovely Dress (Stone Soup Theatre). Holly also enjoys being involved in the vibrant Northwest film community. Some recent projects, Kanashimi and Waiting for Exit, are film festival nominees. Holly has directed numerous workshops and children’s theatre productions throughout Minnesota, Chicago, and NYC. Holly is also the Drama teacher at Federal Way High School. A special thank you to all the participants and their families for helping to keep this dream of live theatre alive for everyone! Education: Bachelor of Fine Arts in Musical Theatre, Chicago College of Performing Arts at Roosevelt University; Performance Certificate, American Musical & Dramatic Academy NYC; Masters in Business Administration with emphasis in Project Management, Keller Graduate School of Management.

Music Director & Pit Orchestra Conductor

Jackson Bores

Jackson is a conductor and teacher originally from the East Bay in California. He is the current band & orchestra director at Renton High School, and plays double bass with the Washington Wind Symphony. Jackson was the music director and orchestra conductor for The Addams Family last year, and reprises those roles with this summer's production of Once Upon a Mattress. In addition to Rosebud productions, Jackson has played in pit orchestras for productions such as Annie, Into the Woods, Rocky Horror, Footloose, and Young Frankenstein. Education: Bachelor of Music in Music Education from Washington State University.

Choreographer

Jackie Caldwell

Jackie has danced ballet for almost ten years and enjoyed performing roles such as Sugar Plum Fairy in The Nutcracker and Swanhilda in Coppelia. She attended the Houston Ballet summer program. Starting in 2020, she began teaching virtual musical theatre classes to young dancers and has loves spending her summers choreographing for Rosebud. She currently trains though the Space.TV program out of Brea, CA. She is also an assistant teacher for the “Kids Artistic Revue” national dance convention.

Stage Manager

Ellie Rutt

Costumer

Michele Graves

Michele has been the costume designer for RCTC for many years as well as being the Resident Costume Designer for Tacoma Little Theatre for the past 10 years. She enjoys working on mainstage and summer youth productions. Her passion for costuming both adult and youth actors shines through the actors' performances when portraying their characters in the shows. She has watched many of the young actors at RCTC grow from the preteen program to the teen program and is impressed with how their acting, singing, and dancing skills have progressed.

Original Creative Team

Mary Rodgers (1931-2014). An accomplished author, screenwriter and composer, Mary Rodgers' earliest professional credits included serving as Assistant to the Producer of Leonard Bernstein's New York Philharmonic Young People's Concerts.

Her Broadway career began as composer of the 1959 musical Once Upon A Mattressstarring Carol Burnett, later broadcast to great success on network television and revived repeatedly. More than 400 productions of Once Upon A Mattress are presented annually in the U.S. and Canada and a 1997 Broadway production starring Sarah Jessica Parker earned a Tony Award nomination for Best Musical Revival. ABC-TV presented a new version of Once Upon A Mattress on The Wonderful World of Disney in late 2005 (subsequently released on DVD), once again starring Carol Burnett, this time as the wicked Queen Aggravain, with Tracy Ullman as Princess Winnifred.

Ms. Rodgers had been a popular author of fiction for young people ever since her first book was released in 1972: Freaky Friday received the first prize at the Book World Spring Book Festival Awards, The Christopher Award, and was cited on the ALA Notable Book List. In 1977 Disney Studios adapted Freaky Friday into a movie, with screenplay by Rodgers, and starring Barbara Harris and Jodie Foster; a remake was broadcast on the ABC television network in 1995 and a musical version, by Rodgers and John Forster, was presented by Theatreworks/USA in 1991; and a new film remake, starring Jamie Lee Curtis and Lindsay Lohan, was released by Walt Disney Pictures in Summer 2003.

As a composer, her additional theatre credits include Hot Spot starring Judy Holliday, The Mad Show, Working, and The Griffin and the Minor Canon. Her television credits include Once Upon a Mattress, Three to Make Music (written with her sister Linda and starring Mary Martin), Feathertop, and Marlo Thomas' Free to Be...You and Me. She also composed the scores for several productions featuring the legendary Bil Baird Marionettes, including Davy Jones’ Locker and Pinocchio, and several musicals for Theatreworks/USA. Her musicals have been celebrated in a revue, Hey, Love.

Additional authorship credits include The Rotten Book, A Billion for Boris (The Christopher Award; ALA Notable Book List), Summer Switch and the screenplay for Disney Studios, The Devil and Max Devlin.

The daughter of composer Richard Rodgers and Dorothy Rodgers, Mary collaborated with her mother on several projects, including: the 1970 book A Word to the Wives; a nationally syndicated radio program of the same title; and “Of Two Minds,” a monthly column for McCall's Magazine. She also made several concert appearances with William Hammerstein, son of the celebrated lyricist, in an evening of reminiscences, anecdotes and musical selections celebrating their fathers' collaboration. For many years, Mary Rodgers served as the Rodgers family representative to The Rodgers & Hammerstein Organization.

At the time of her death, Mary Rodgers was Chairman Emeritus and served on the Board of the Juilliard School. She served on the boards of Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, Inc., the Bridgehampton Chamber Music Festival and the Dramatists Guild Council.

In private life she was married to the late Henry Guettel, former Executive Director of the Theatre Development Fund (TDF); at the time of her death she was survived by her sister, Linda Rodgers Emory, five children, and seven grandchildren and step-grandchildren.

Dean Fuller (1922-2017) was a composer, playwright, conductor, sailor, pilot, novelist and teacher. B.A. music and drama, Yale University. Alumnus Tamiment Playhouse, last of the Borscht Belt boot camps for revue writers, lyricists and composers. He co-wrote the book for Once Upon A Mattress, contributed music (with lyrics by Marshall Barer) to the revues Once Over Lightly (Zero Mostel, Jack Gilford, Sono Osato), New Faces of 1956 (Tiger Haynes, Inga Swenson, Maggie Smith) and Ziegfeld Follies (Beatrice Lillie). Musical director and arranger for Tallulah Bankhead's only nightclub appearances (Sands Hotel, Las Vegas). Composer, National Repertory Theatre (Eva LeGallienne, Denholm Elliott, Farley Granger, Sylvia Sydney). Co-author/composer of the Off-Broadway musical Smith. Author of three novels: Passage, A Death in Paris and Death of a Critic.

Marshall Barer (1923-1998) could have been labeled eclectic, mercurial, peripatetic, or simply promiscuous, but it mattered not to him, who over the years mated his lyrics to the melodies of Michele Brourman, Hoagy Carmichael, Gordon Connell, J. Fred Coots, Vernon Duke, Duke Ellington, Michael Feinstein, Dean Fuller, Ronny Graham, Fred Hellerman, Burton Lane, Michel Legrand, Michael Leonard, Hugh Martin, Anita Nye, Lance Ong, Norman Paris, Mary Rodgers, the Davids (Raksin, Ross, Shire), William Roy, Bruce Scott, Ralph Strain, Joseph Thalken, Kurt Weill, and Alec Wilder—not to mention his own. While vouchsafing no "actual-all-time-number-one-favorite" he often confessed that, when asked, he found himself "leaning toward" Ms. Rodgers, with whom he wrote Once Upon A Mattress (1959) "several times."