PENNY AYN MAAS (Director & Choreographer) worked as a professional actress, singer and dancer in New York City for over 20 years. On Broadway she had long, successful runs in three Tony award winning shows: the original cast of Crazy for You, including singing on the cast album, the revival of Damn Yankees with Jerry Lewis, and the acclaimed revival of Cabaret at Studio 54 where she played multiple instruments and worked with such stars as Neil Patrick Harris, John Stamos and Brooke Shields. She is featured on the Off-Broadway cast album of Swingtime Canteen, a show she has performed and staged all over the country. She was a ballroom dancer/wife in the re-make of the movie The Stepford Wives and she made her television debut as “Joy” on the soap opera “Another World”. She has performed at various regional theaters across the country and on cruise ships around the world.

As a director and choreographer, she has worked Off-Broadway with the National Yiddish Theatre (The Pirates of Penzance, The Marriage Contract,) the Algonquin Theatre Company (Sessions, From Gershwin to Berlin), Second Stages – as an associate (Vanities) and at the Cherry Lane Theatre for the Fringe Festival (Kaboom!). She was also the Associate Director and Co-Choreographer for three years on the BC/EFA benefit concert “Broadway Backwards.” Regionally she continuously directs and choreographs for the Riverside Center for the Performing Arts (42nd Street, Grumpy Old Men: the Musical, South Pacific, A Chorus Line, Mamma Mia!, Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, Oklahoma!, Buddy: The Buddy Holly Story, The Music of Andrew Lloyd Webber, Les Miserables) where she won the Broadway World DC Award for Best Direction of a Dinner Theatre show. Other Virginia credits include productions at the Richmond Triangle Players (Psycho Beach Party, Cabaret) as well as choreography for The Winter’s Tale (Henley Street Theatre) and assisting on the Barksdale Theatre production of White Christmas. Also, on the East Coast, she helped mount Love Changes Everything and Come to the Cabaret! A Celebration of Kander & Ebb for the Buck Hill Skytop Music Festival in Pennsylvania, where she served as the Artistic Associate for two years.

Her DFW credits include directing and choreographing several shows for Lyric Stage in Dallas (Cinderella, Cabaret, Man of LaMancha, I Do! I Do!, Guys and Dolls, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Mame, Anything Goes), choreographing First Date for Stage West, directing Charlotte’s Web for Casa Manana and directing Head Over Heels for Uptown Players in Dallas.

She has taught hip-hop, jazz and tap dance for the Performers Theatre Workshop in New Jersey and has been the Dance Director for both the Columbia Gorge School of Theatre and the Triple Threat Theatre Camp in New Jersey. She has offered several popular dance workshops at the Southeast Theatre Conference and has been an artist in residence, working with students on musical productions, for many high schools across the country. She has been a guest choreographer for three years with New York City’s Theatre Arts Center “Bound for Broadway” shows. She has directed many children’s theatre productions with the renowned Random Farms Kids Theatre in Westchester, NY and for the Center Stage Theatre Company in Connecticut. She was also the founder of the Broadway Camp, at Allegro’s Music School, in Warrenton, Virginia.

For her day job, she is an Associate Professor of Theatre at Texas Christian University where she teaches Musical Theatre Performance. For Theatre TCU she has directed and choreographed Sweet Charity, The Wild Party, Children of Eden, Bare, Bat Boy, Pippin, The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas ad Spring Awakening and provided choreography for The Mystery of Edwin Drood, Fiddler on the Roof, Guys and Dolls, No, No, Nanette, the original revue We Need a Little Christmas as well as movement for the new play Born on a Sunday and the classic Everyman. For Theatre VCU in Richmond, she choreographed numbers and helped stage The Elephant Man, Grease!, Troy Woman and Les Liaisons Dangereuses. Penny is a proud member of AEA, SAG/AFTRA and an Associate member of SDC.