Biography

Casey Nicholaw

Casey Nicholaw is an award-winning director-choreographer, who was heavily involved in San Diego Junior Theatre productions in the late ’70s, before he went off to UCLA and New York.

He performed in numerous Broadway productions before shifting to a highly successful career as a director and choreographer. He has been nominated for multiple Tony Awards over the years for directing and/or choreographing such Broadway productions as The Drowsy Chaperone (2006), The Book of Mormon (2011 – Winner: Best Co-Director), Aladdin (2014), Something Rotten! (2015), Mean Girls (2018), The Prom (2019) and Some Like it Hot (2023 – Winner: Best Choreographer).

SDJT congratulates him for his many creative achievements and successes, and for inspiring new generations of Junior Theatre students!

The Prom, School Edition

Book & Lyrics by Chad Beguelin
Book by Bob Martin
Music by Matthew Sklar
Based on an original concept by Jack Viertel
Original Broadway Production directed and choreographed by Casey Nicholaw
Originally Produced on Broadway by Bill Damaschke, Dori Berinstein, Jack Lane

Four eccentric Broadway stars are in desperate need of a new stage. So when they hear that trouble is brewing around a small-town prom, they know that it’s time to put a spotlight on the issue…and themselves. The town’s parents want to keep the high school dance on the straight and narrow—but when one student just wants to bring her girlfriend to prom, the entire town has a date with destiny. On a mission to transform lives, Broadway’s brassiest join forces with a courageous girl and the town’s citizens and the result is the love that brings them all together.

Mean Girls: High School Version

Directed by Shawn Foote
Choreographed by Marc Caro-Willcox
Music Direction by Eliza Vedar
Assistant Directed by Brooke Henderson

Book by Tina Fey
Music by Jeff Richmond
Lyrics by Nell Benjamin
Based on the Paramount Pictures film Mean Girls

Cady Heron may have grown up on an African Savanna, but nothing prepared her for the wild and vicious ways of her new home…suburban Illinois! Cady rises to the top of the popularity pecking order by taking on the ruthless Regina George and learns the hard way that you can’t cross a Queen Bee without getting stung.