Chip Deffaa is an American author, playwright, screenwriter, jazz historian, singer, songwriter, director, and producer of plays and recordings.
Mentored by former vaudevillian Todd Fisher and studying at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in his youth, Deffaa became hooked on show business while performing as a child actor.
Musetto, Matt Diebel, Steve Cuozzo, and Faye Penn gave him wide latitude to write about jazz, cabaret, classic pop, and theater.
opened September 21, 2010, at the New Players Theater on the West End in London/ Deffaa directed a production of George M. Cohan Tonight!
In 2002 he produced The Chip Deffaa Invitational Theater Festival, taking over two theaters on 42nd Street in NYC to present, with support from Chashama, more than 25 theatrical productions in a six-week period, featuring Jon Peterson, Laurence O'Keefe, Brett Kristofferson, Peter-Michael Marino, Okey Chenoweth, Celia Keenan-Bolger, Dawne Swearingen, Karen Oberlin, Deb Rabbai, and more.
Its longtime artistic director, Edith O'Hara (1917-2020), gave Deffaa carte blanche to develop and mount at her theater any shows he wished to write and direct, and she presented productions of many Deffaa shows, including Irving Berlin's America, Irving Berlin: In Person, Mad About the Boy, Theater Boys, and One Night with Fanny Brice.
Deffaa's The Irving Berlin Ragtime Revue "broke box-office records at the 13th Street Repertory Theater" (as reported by Stephi Wild in Broadwayworld.com, March 24, 2020).
On his vocal album Chip Deffaa's Tin Pan Alley, he sings old-time favorites (including songs he learned from Carol Channing and George Burns), joined by such guest stars as Molly Ryan, Jon Peterson, Olivia Chun, Michael Townsend Wright, and Logan & Lawson Saby, with accompaniment by Richard Danley and Andy Stein.
Deffaa has written liner notes for albums by Chase Baird, Count Basie, Ray Brown, Ruth Brown, Miles Davis, Benny Goodman, Scott Hamilton, Dick Hyman, Jon-Erik Kellso, Tito Puente, Randy Sandke, Diane Schuur, Maxine Sullivan, and Frank Vignola.