12-20-2011 Interview

Ivan Menchel wrote the script for Bonnie and Clyde The Musical. He was born into a show-biz family; his mother is a singer and his father was a stand-up comic. With an early life filled with writers, performers, comics, etc, perhaps Ivan would have been a writer no matter what, but it was the tragic events of his early life which dictated the kind of writer he would become and the kind of material he would have to write. The deaths of his three month old brother when he (Ivan) was only five, and his beloved father when he was 18, were the impetus for his very first writing and continue to inform his work to this day. Listen to this charming man talk about the courageous struggle he waged to integrate these dreadful events and the fallout of despair and depression that he was somehow able to turn into comedy.