Sheila Wurmser and John Sparks
"Everything I ever learned about how to help writers create characters and turn scripts into the best and most cohesive versions of their original ideas, I learned from Sheila Wurmser. There are few people on the planet who understand story development better than she."
Todd Schulkin
Schulkin Management, London & Los Angeles
"Having worked with Sheila for many years, her attention to project detail, continuity, and overall flow is exquisite. Currently attached to produce my screenplay titled Chasing Monarchs, Sheila's dedication to each project she's working on, in whatever capacity, is extremely inspiring."
Michael Davidson, Screenwriter
Sheila is an independent film producer who partnered with Todd Schulkin, to form Smiling Dog Productions, dedicated to producing feature films and television shows from emerging talent. Smiling Dog’s expertise is in story development and working with playwrights to crossover into film and television. Smiling Dog is currently packaging Michael Davidson's screenplay Chasing Monarchs, a 2005 Nicholl Fellowship Quarterfinalist, and developing other film projects and television series. Sheila produced the award-winning short film THE MEZZOS and the independent feature Lifer's Picnic (starring Jena Malone, Brad Renfro and Alicia Witt) for HSI/Tomorrow Films.
A Chicago native and Chicago theater veteran, Sheila co-founded and serves as the Artistic Director of THEATRE N.O.W., a collective of writers, actors and directors dedicated to creating and producing new, original works for the Los Angeles stage, film and television industries. THEATRE N.O.W. performed monthly staged readings at various locations in greater Los Angeles.
Previously, Sheila worked as a Manager at Giant Step Entertainment, the Story Editor at Innovative Artists Talent and Literary Agency and as a Casting Director at Tepper-Gallegos. In Chicago, she served as Artistic Director of the Jeff Award-Winning Alliance Theatre Company where she directed The Ruling Class, The Hostage and In Trousers, as well as producing The Wake of Jamey Foster and The Killing Game. In Los Angeles, she directed Games at Theatre/Theater and Texana at the Showcase Playhouse.
Sheila holds a BA and an MFA in directing from Western Illinois University.
"Anyone who wants to write musicals should study with John Sparks. He thoroughly understands the craft and conveys that understanding with kindness and encouragement. I still rely on the basic principles of theater songwriting that John taught me over 20 years ago."
Composer/Lyricist Mark Hollmann – Urinetown -- Tony Award winner 2002
"Unlike most people who offer opinions on theater -- (blogs, chat rooms, your Aunt Alice) -- John Sparks really knows what he's talking about. He's my favorite go-to guy when it comes to crafting, creating, casting -- anything that has to do with making musicals. Or making your musical better."
Susan DiLallo -- Once Upon a Time in New Jersey – Kleban Award winner
John is the Founding Director of New Musicals, Inc (NMI) in Los Angeles, an outgrowth of the BMI-Lehman Engel Musical Theatre Workshop where John was a member for many years until it was defunded in 1979. At that time he was instrumental in raising funds and incorporating the group as the private non-profit which is known as NMI today. John oversaw the 100% volunteer artists' collective as it grew iinto the vibrant institution that now supports a full-time paid staff nurturing hundreds of writers, actors and directors of musical theatre in the Los Angeles area.
John discovered musicals on the stage (as opposed to film) when he was 15 and living near Boston where he saw many new musicals on their way to Broadway – future hits, maybes and misses. For what would be considered a pittance today he saw stars - Elaine Stritch, Don Ameche, Margaret Hamilton, Julie Andrews, Richard Burton, Lawrence Goulet, Barbra Streisand, Vivien Leigh, Jean Pierre Aumont, Jackie Gleason, Robert Morse, Walter Pidgeon, and many others well-known at the time – all singing, dancing and telling funny/sad/dramatic stories with new songs by Leroy Anderson, Jule Styne, Comden and Green, Noel Coward, Lerner and Loewe, and other practitioners. It was hearing the songs before Broadway audiences did and realizing he would soon be hearing some of them on the radio that cemented John's love of musical theatre.
John began writing musicals at Stonehill College, still in the Boston area, where he was able to actually see them performed with the help of his classmates. Later in Los Angeles he discovered the BMI-Lehman Engel Musical Theatre Workshop and began to learn about writing musicals in earnest – from the master. Lehman had conducted over 300 Broadway shows, made a study of those shows and wrote books about them - their construction, the placement of their songs, the styles of their music, etc., and shared the knowledge with his students in the BMI workshops in New York, Nashville, Los Angeles and Toronto.
John returned to school at UCLA and acquired an MFA in Playwriting – although he didn’t write a play, of course. He wrote a musical (Come Into My Gallery, which was produced at the Freud Playhouse at UCLA in 1975/76 – no, it didn’t run for 2 years, but the run of the show spanned the Christmas break!).
John wrote the music and lyrics for a new musical (Babes In Barns) that was produced at Theatre Building Chicago in 1984/85, a production that took him to Chicago – where he met Sheila Wurmser before her move to the west coast. The producers of that show visited the LA workshop and decided to open a similar program for writers of musicals in the Chicago area under John’s leadership. For the next 33 years he commuted from Los Angeles to Chicago, first for one weekend each month to conduct workshop sessions, and then (from 1999 – 2009) for two weeks out of each month, to serve as Artistic Director of the theatre’s musical program, where he produced and oversaw the production of nearly 200 new musicals in readings, workshops and mainstage productions. The workshop continued for 5 more seasons after Theatre Building Chicago was sold, and he reluctantly returned to Los Angeles, now a resident of one city rather than the bi-urban guy he had been for 3 decades, racking up enough frequent-flyer miles to take frequent trips to London, where he served Mercury Musical Developments there as a Board Member from 2000 until 2021.
Currently John lives in Glendale, California, still writing, still nurturing writers who belong to NMI, and now nurturing projects with Sheila at Write 4 Art. He no longer composes music; having met many composers whose ears are younger and hipper (John ruefully admits that “my ears were formed by Bing Crosby and the Andrews Sisters in the 1940’s!”) He now writes book and sometimes lyrics for new musicals, usually adaptations like Seagull Song, the Chekov adaptation that Sheila and John created with composer/lyricist Jake Anthony.
Staff of Write4Art
