Tor Hyams and Lisa St. Lou offer a unique blend of comedy and heart through musicals, plays and screenwriting. Among their many projects, the ‘dynamic duo’ (Huffington Post) have written for a Backstreet Boy, a talking pig, and a former sexpot from the 1990’s, not to mention Tor’s Grammy nomination and Lisa’s Broadway debut in The Producers.
THEATER
Original theater works include Senior Living, a play about people dying to live, which takes place in a retirement community (read first at Cherry Lane Theatre in NYC (directed by Judith Ivey) and had its world premiere at Maine’s Portland Stage, January 2022, Collateral Beauty, an adaptation of the film starring Will Smith, Ed Norton and Kate Winslet (in collaboration with screenwriter Allan Loeb), Idio(ma)tic, a literal thinking-out-of-the-box comedic anthology of idioms about love, the devil and, yes, boxes, How We Do: Back in the Day, a family musical about belonging and race, based on the real-life experience of Backstreet Boy, Howie D (work-shopped at the New Victory Theater in New York/world premiered at the Rose Theatre in Omaha (January 2020), Josephine, a musical telling of the life of legendary performer, Josephine Baker commissioned by original Grease producer, Ken Waissman, a political satire musical revue called the 1st Annual Trump Family Special, which starred Gina Gershon in an off-Broadway run at the Triad Theater, and Stealing Time, a story about a woman struggling to reclaim her power after years in an emotionally abusive marriage (premiered at New York Musical Theater Festival 2012 and has been further developed by Emerging Artists Theatre, The Pitch at the Finger Lakes Musical Theatre Festival and at Goodspeed Opera House by way of the Johnny Mercer Writers Colony),
The duo was commissioned to write a musical adaptation of the legendary television show, Green Acres. Additional commissions include Ensemble, a collection of previously unpublished letters by Tennessee Williams, Untitled (Theatrical Rights Worldwide) to be performed by middle and high school age students, and Quarantween: The Musical (TheaterWorks USA).
TELEVISION
Tor and Lisa have written Clusterf*ck (pilot – “The Rewrite”), the story of two forty-something’s who decided to leave their crumbling marriages for each other and become writing partners. Amidst dwindling savings and a newly blended family, the two will stop at nothing to “write” all the wrongs of life’s banalities. The Lou (pilot – “Coming Home”), is a ½ hour dramedy with songs about a singer/songwriter who returns home to St. Louis after discovering her husband is a sex addict and struggles to rebuild her life, while contending with her dysfunctional family. Riverdale Manor (pilot – “Sex Again”), is a ½ hour comedy set in a retirement community about a group of people dying to live. It’s like Friends, but at a senior living facility instead of a fake apartment in the West Village that no one could afford in real life anyway. Animal Control (pilot – “Rabid Squirrel”), is a The Office style comedy about an animal control unit in Beaver County, Oklahoma. They keep us safe from the animals and the animals safe from us. The Whites (pilot – “Election Day”), is a ½ hour comedy about a black family living in a wealthy white suburb during the Obama years. It’s the Wonder Years, but set in the 2000’s with a black family named White. In Nowadays, a wanna-be-Broadway-star-turned-trophy-wife decides to reclaim the career she almost had. It’s a musical mixed with equal parts 2 Broke Girls, Mary Tyler Moore and Dead To Me.
MORE STUFF
Hyams and St. Lou wrote, produced and directed a television pilot and three songs and music videos for Far Out Toys’ “GloUp Girls” doll brand.
Mommy Needs A Timeout for Nickelodeon’s Nickmom channel.
Ain’t No Good Man: debut soul album from Lisa St. Lou (7 weeks on Billboard top 30)
Their one-woman event, LIFE. Who Knew? has played to sold-out audiences across the country, including New York’s 54 Below, and Joe’s Pub, Los Angeles’ Rockwell, and the Gaslight Cabaret Festival in St. Louis.
The duo participated in the BMI Lehman Engel Musical Theatre Workshop and were selected twice as residents for the Johnny Mercer Writers Colony at Goodspeed Opera House. Collectively, Tor and Lisa have won several awards, most notably Tor’s Grammy nomination.