“Teitler’s elegantly orchestrated music sometimes has a touch of Kurt Weill; elsewhere you hear echoes of Stephen Sondheim’s Sweeney Todd" - The Times
“Bursting with invention and intelligence… everything feels completely fresh, a riot with a heart. An audacious gem of rare quality” - The Guardian

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, he is the co-creator of the West End musical The Grinning Man and the RSC’s The Magician’s Elephant. 

Marc’s work for TV/feature film includes the score for Hearts (nominee for the Berlinale’s VW Score Award ) The Seventh Dimension, Missing (winner of Best Score, Berlin Independent Film Festival), and The Royal Opera House’s animated short Stuck On a Sunday by Oscar-nominated director Marc Craste. His music has been placed in series including American Horror Story, Squid Games – The ChallengePortlandia, Bones, The Patient and his commercial work includes scoring global campaigns for Playstation and Johnnie Walker. His 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’.

Marc is currently developing the score for a new version of The Red Shoes with Nancy Harris which premieres at the RSC in November 2024. Marc’s hallucinatory album Island of Komodo, made in collaboration with noise artist Bernd Wuertz under the artistic moniker Ackou, is released in April 2024 and features the orchestral glitch single Madness In a Jar. Their follow up album, made in collaboration with performance artist Ayu Okakita, is released in September 2024.

 

 

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 and which has its Australian premiere in April 2024.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 musical BaddiesThe Magician’s Elephant had its world premiere at the RSC in 2021 and its US premiere in September 2024.

New musicals in development include  the body horror for the screen Nice to Meat You with acclaimed horror writer Kirsty Logan and director Marina Waltz and a new AI-themed musical adaptation of Pinocchio for the stage with writer Tommy Antonio and director Natalie Abrahami.