Mark Nichols (composer)

Mark Nichols (born February 22, 1964) is an American playwright, composer, and lyricist, best known for his musicals Little Boy Goes to Hell (1988), Joe Bean (2003), and How to Survive the Apocalypse (2009).

He is also known in the northwestern United States for his work with Fred Jamison (aka Beaverchief of the Lummi) for whom he arranged 20 Northwest Coast Native songs for orchestra, girl choir, and rock band, performed by the Seattle Symphony in 1996.

Mark has produced a number of other seminal northwest albums, particularly Trillian Green's Metamorphosis, "Awesome"'s CD, Delaware, and Manooghi Hi's debut Hi.

In 1987, The "epic rock fable" Little Boy Goes to Hell, was released as a four-record set with book and marked the composer's first attempt at music theater writing.

[citation needed] The second show to achieve the level of notoriety of Little Boy, Joe Bean, was suggested by his long-time collaborator, Bob McAllister, a Bainbridge Island High School English teacher who had hired Mark to write a spring musical based on the biblical story of Job.

Nichols says he did everything possible to make "a depressing story" as much fun as he could, using a plethora of musical styles from Gilbert and Sullivan-inspired chorus to Grunge-era dirge rock to a sort of primal Dead Can Dance sound.