“Teitler’s elegantly orchestrated music sometimes has a touch of Kurt Weill; elsewhere you hear echoes of Stephen Sondheim’s Sweeney Todd” – The Times
Marc Teitler is an award-winning composer whose dark, playful and magical works weave together unusual sounds, orchestral textures and subtle electronics to create spellbinding worlds for animation, contemporary dance, theatre and film.
Recipient of the Guardian Innovation Award, Marc is the co-creator of the West End musical The Grinning Man and The Magician’s Elephant for the Royal Shakespeare Company. His work for TV/feature film includes music for American Horror Story, Portlandia, Bones, Loud House, The Seventh Dimension, Missing (winner in the Best Music category at the Berlin Independent Film Festival), Hearts (nominee for the VW Score Award at the Berlin Film Festival) and Stuck On a Sunday by Oscar-nominated director Marc Craste. His commercial work includes global campaigns for Playstation and Johnnie Walker.
Marc’s scores for plays include Pulitzer-nominated Dance Nation at the Almeida, Blood & Gifts at the National Theatre and The Secret Agent at the Young Vic. He wrote the main theme for the NY Time’s podcast ‘Modern Love’.
“Bursting with invention and intelligence… everything feels completely fresh, a riot with a heart. An audacious gem of rare quality” – The Guardian
Marc has a great passion for uncovering or writing stories which he can transform into stage musicals. The seed of the musical The Grinning Man was planted in his mind when he happened upon a silent film poster featuring a mysterious smile at a friend’s place. He discovered that the film was based on a lesser-known Victor Hugo novel, (which had also inspired the character of The Joker), and with his collaborators Tim Phillips, Carl Grose, and Tom Morris, Marc transformed this source material into a darkly comic musical fable that captivated audiences at Bristol Old Vic and later in London’s West End at Trafalgar Studios. The show caught the attention of Andy Serkis at Imaginarium Studios who transformed it into a motion-capture film and the cast album soared to the top of the indie charts, cementing the musical’s success and leading to several international productions.
Shortly after, Marc came across Kate DiCamillo’s novel The Magician’s Elephant in a London bookstore. The characters and story began to suggest all kinds of possibilities and Marc set about turning this into a musical together with collaborator Nancy Harris with whom he had previously created the musicals Baddies and The Red Shoes. The show had its world premiere at the Royal Shakespeare Company in 2021 and its US premiere is slated for 2024.
He is currently working on a new AI-themed musical adaptation of Pinocchio for the West End, a horror feature with director Marina Waltz and a sci-fi musical called Rescue Fantasy for the Soho Theatre.