The 6th Act presents our third annual celebration of Shakespeare's birthday at the Ebell! Enjoy a staged reading of Shakespeare's As You Like It featuring live music composed and performed by Nathan Wang.

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Nathan Wang (Composer) A successful composer in Hollywood and Asian cinema, Wang's filmography includes scores for Jackie Chan movies, Steven Spielberg documentaries, animated cartoons, operas, and symphonies. After graduating from Pomona College, Nathan received a Rotary Ambassadorial scholarship to pursue postgraduate studies at Oxford University. He collaborated with Hans Zimmer on the Academy Award-winning documentary The Last Days and was commissioned to write an opera for the Los Angeles Opera, On Gold Mountain. Wong has two Emmys, for “Best Arrangement of a Song” for the Showtime show Reefer Madness and for the documentary The Legend of Pancho Barnes and the Happy Bottom Riding Club. As a musical director, he has worked with notable artists like B.D. Wong, Lea Salonga, Tia Carrere, Kristin Chenoweth, Kristen Bell, and David Hyde Pierce. Nathan is honored to have collaborated with Matthew Leavitt on Kid Gloves and has previously partnered with him on two operas for the Los Angeles Opera and Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing.

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Matthew Leavitt (Director/Adaptation) is a Los Angeles based playwright, director and librettist, who is infinitely grateful for his artistic partnership and friendship with the extraordinary Nathan Wang. Their many collaborations include two new operas commissioned by LA Opera (Orpheus and The Wreck of the Miranda), the hit musical comedy Kid Gloves at the Skylight Theatre, a musical commissioned by The Huntington Library (Shanghai’s World Emporium) and an adaptation of Much Ado About Nothing at The Ebell of Los Angeles. Playwrighting credits include The Boomerang Effect which is published by Concord Theatricals and has enjoyed numerous productions throughout the US and the UK, The $5 Shakespeare Company, which has the unique distinction of being the very final play to receive the coveted LA Times Critic’s Choice, and Sukkot, which debuted at The Skylight Theatre under the direction of Joel Zwick. Selected directing credits include John Patrick Shanley’s Outside Mullingar (The 6th Act, at The Matrix Theatre and The Skylight Theatre), Hamlet (The 6th Act, winner of ‘Best Director of a Play’ Stage Scene LA Award), The Brothers Abelson Since 1946 (World Premiere - Electric Lodge), Legally Brunette (World Premiere - The Garry Marshall Theatre in LA, 54 Below in NYC), Sonnets From Suburbia (Edinburgh Fringe Festival, 59E59 in NYC), The Scorpion and the Frog: a time killer (World Premiere - Hollywood Fringe Festival), Showstopper (World Premiere - Whitefire Theatre), Barfly Shakespeare (The 6th Act), Twelfth Night (Village Green Productions), The Taming of the Shrew (Village Green Productions), Arrival (Sci-Fest LA), and Goes The Weasel (Ammunition Theatre Company).

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