Hi there!
I’m Oliver. I am an intersex musical theatre writer and songwriter, passionate about creating original life-affirming work that opens hearts and minds, and facilitates healing and connection. I am inspired to harness the power of storytelling and music to help illuminate the beauty and innocence of our shared humanity, all while garnering exposure for communities that need it most.
Works include XY, an original musical inspired by my journey to embrace my identity as an intersex man, and She Reached for Heaven, inspired by Johann Hari’s TED Talk, “Everything You Know About Addiction Is Wrong,” which posits the opposite of addiction isn’t sobriety, it’s connection. Also in development is Wunderkind, a new musical about a young piano prodigy growing up in a Jewish-American family in the early 20th century.
In addition to writing, I love leading an original corporate team-building experience, Create Your Theme Song, which inspires laughter, meaning and connection through collaborative songwriting. I am also proud to work with Musicians on Call, an organization that helps bring the healing power of music to hospital patients’ bedsides.
I’d be delighted to add you to my newsletter, which you can sign up for here. I love connecting with people and will be very happy to hear from you.
Thank you so much for visiting. If you don’t know where to start, here is a funny song, here is a life-affirming song, here is a song about loss, a song about longing, a song about love, a song about childhood, and a song about the journey of life.
Winner of the inaugural Stephen Schwartz Award, the ASCAP Foundation Sammy Cahn Award and a Dramatists Guild Foundation Fellowship, Oliver Houser (he/him) has headlined at the Kennedy Center and presented his musicals at Chicago Shakespeare Theatre, the Village Theatre, the National Alliance for Musical Theatre Festival (NAMT), the SoHo Playhouse, Nashville Rep, the New York Musical Festival, the New York International Fringe Festival, the Other Palace Theatre in the UK, London’s Royal Academy of Music and beyond.
Oliver has developed work at the Ucross Foundation, the KHN Center for the Arts, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, the Rhinebeck Writers Retreat, the Goodspeed Musicals Writers Grove and the Warren Miller Center for the Arts. Oliver is a Jonathan Larson Grant finalist, and his work was a finalist for the O’Neill Musical Theatre Conference and one of three finalists for the 2022 Relentless Award, the largest prize presented to an unproduced musical. He was selected for Jeanine Tesori’s Front & Center Master Class and American Theatre Wing’s “Pitching Your Show” Master Class, and is an alum of the ASCAP Musical Theatre Workshop, the BMI Advanced Musical Theatre Workshop and the Johnny Mercer Songwriters Project. Oliver is a proud member of ASCAP and The Dramatists Guild.