Margo Lion

Margo Lion is a producer for plays and musicals both on Broadway and off-Broadway. She is known for her role in producing the stage and screen hit Hairspray. Combined, the works Lion produced have won 20 Tony Awards and a Pulitzer Prize.

Margo Lion is from Baltimore, Maryland and is of German-Jewish heritage. She started her producing career with Lyn Austin at The Music-Theater Group/Lenox Arts Center. Her first commercial production was How I Got That Story in 1982. Later off-Broadway productions included the 1987 version of Martha Clarke's The Garden of Earthly Delights, Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune and The Cryptogram.

Her first Broadway production was I Hate Hamlet in 1991.

In 1987 Lion commissioned George Wolfe, Susan Birkenhead and Luther Henderson to write a show about Jelly Roll Morton. That musical became the 1992 Broadway show, Jelly's Last Jam, starring Gregory Hines.

In 1993-94 Lion produced Angels in America: Millennium Approaches and Perestroika followed by the 1995 production of Seven Guitars. Angels in America: Millennium Approaches won the 1993 Pulitzer Prize for Drama.

In 1997, Lion produced Triumph of Love, based on a 1732 comedy by Pierre de Marivaux. Shortly after its run, while watching John Waters' 1988 film, Hairspray she had the idea to adapt the film into a musical. She recruited Marc Shaiman, a Hollywood film composer, for the musical's score. Four years later, in August 2002, the musical Hairspray premiered on Broadway and became an immediate commercial and critical hit.

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