Jan Roper

Biography

Jan is a composer, music director, keyboardist, singer and native Southern California girl. Her first new work, Jerusalem A.D., an immersive rock musical about Christ’s last week of life is licensed by CMI Shows. City of Light came next, which was part of the ASCAP Workshop of 2016 and the sheNYC Festival of 2017 where it won Best Score. Her new work, The Path to Catherine, was produced by Write Act Repertory in 2022 at LA’s Brick House Theater and received a regional Best Musical nomination for Broadway World. The Path to Catherine concept album will be released this year on Center Stage Records. Another current new work in development, América Tropical, was the winner of the Raise Your Voice Award for Diversity and Inclusion in 2020. In 2021 it was a finalist in the Eugene O’Neill National Music Theater Conference and in 2022 for the Jonathan Larson Grant. In 2022, América Tropical had 2 staged readings produced by 2 highly respected SoCal theater companies: McCoy-Rigby Entertainment and Musical Theatre West, as well as the featured musical for the Latiné Musical Theatre Lab’s Table Read Series, 2023, with support from the Lin Manuel Miranda Family Fund. In addition, América Tropical just received a live-streamed reading in NYC in February 2025, produced by Jamila Ponton-Bragg of JamRock Productions and TRU. Jan also won the L.A. Scenie Award in the 2019-20 & 2022-23 season for Best Music Director and was nominated by Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle for Best Musical Direction in 2024. She stays busy as a faculty teacher at AMDA College of the Performing Arts.