By Alix Cohen…
Heads Up, Theater Writers!
Founded in 1962 by former president of The Dramatists Guild, lyricist Alan Jay Lerner, the Dramatists Guild Foundation offers financial aid, rehearsal/work spaces, and educational programs. It nurtures and cross-pollinates playwrights, librettists, lyricists, and composers. You do not have to be a member of a professional organization or commercially produced to avail yourself of its excellent programs.
Few organizations outside academe foster theater writers without an end goal to production. (The now shuttered Lark was another.) Esteemed companies developing new work tend to do so with an eye to their subscribers. The Foundation is an independent 501C3 Non-Profit, not as you might assume, an arm of The Dramatist’s Guild, Drama League, or Broadway League. It backs up encouragement with resources.
DGF Executive Director Rachel Routh and President Andrew Lippa arrive at the 2024 DGF Gala- Photo Rebecca J Michelson
Executive Director Rachel Routh comes from a long line of musicians. She herself sang. Eschewing a performance career, she decided to combine love of theater and music with business, purposefully becoming a non-profit and commercial arts consultant in management, marketing and fundraising; later establishing a production company.
Thirteen years into her current position, Routh is creative, focused, and infectiously enthusiastic. When she started, the Foundation gave out 20-25 grants a year. Today, 250 are awarded at a value between $300,000 and $500,000 dollars. Virtually every advocate and educational program has expanded. How do writers find their way to DGF?
Its Legacy Project (free on YouTube) might provide initial exposure to the organization. There are currently 30 episodes in which younger writers interview those more established. You might, for example, watch Michael John LaChuisa interview the recently deceased Charles Strouse, David Zippel talk with Sheldon Harnick and Jerry Bock, or Lin Manuel Miranda tell Joseph Stein how”Fiddler on the Roof” influenced In the Heights. It’s a treasure trove.
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLJGArPCqtLD8SuX25M9uHtAwhfOK5s8ld&si=BrCjlcCNMtuGE_3W
Adam Guettel interviewing Edward Albee
Education also extends outward with Roe Green Visiting Voices. Experienced professionals have been sent to fifty states. Theaters, institutions and organizations arrange to host a dramatist speaker. The Foundation provides funding to cover travel and other expenses. Routh tells me visiting are often allied with a location or theater connected to their artistic upbringing. Playwright Terrence McNally wanted to be sent to his home state of Texas.
Perhaps you need space to write, rehearse, or do a reading/presentation. Your apartment is too small in which to maneuver. Your collaborator lives in a different borough. The Foundation offers three rooms centrally located at 520 Eighth Avenue. “Saving writers money is as important as awarding a grant,” Routh notes.
The biggest, called the Music Hall, was inaugurated by late composer/lyricist Carol Hall (Lifetime Member of the Dramatists Guild Council, Vice-President of the Dramatists Guild Fund, author “The Best LIttle Whorehouse in Texas”) and her husband Leonard Majzlin. It can seat 40 and hosts a Baby Grand Steinway donated by musical theater collaborators Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty.
Bess Wohl (“Liberation”, “Grand Horizons”) joined playwright, lyricist and DGF President Emeritus Gretchen Cryer (“I’m Getting My Act Together And Taking It On The Road.”
A mid-size room, The Composers’ Corner, boasts a Yamaha piano presented by current President Andrew Lippa (composer, lyricist, book writer, performer, producer) who is a Yamaha Ambassador. The third, The Writers’ Den, offers Carol Hall’s own keyboard donated by her husband “so it could continue making music.”
Scheduled spaces are air-conditioned with gender-neutral, handicapped accessible rest rooms. Routh tells me a “secret” piano not currently in use arrived from the estate of Stephen Sondheim. The icon was a long time board member, participated in DGF’s Legacy Project series, and was committed to supporting the next generation of writers.
Another way to benefit is to become a Fellow, an annual program by writers for writers founded in 2000 (by Lynn Ahrens, Stephen Flaherty, Janet Neipris, and Susan Miller) so that playwrights and musical theater writers can learn from each other. It’s a singular approach. Playwriting can be solitary while musical theater writers often work in teams. Current chairs, to which writers have additional access, are Itamar Moses, Rona Siddiqui, Migdalia Cruz, and Anne Washburn. Special guests are often invited to engage with the group .
Photo: Sophie Boyce, from the DGF Fellows 2024-2025 Class, with Todd London, Director of the DGF Fellows Program. They are at the final meeting of the 2024-2025 class, where the Fellows all received a book from the personal library of Stephen Sondheim
Each Fellow gets a one-on-one session with an industry professional that DGF facilitates. “Our team speaks with individuals to understand who might be most helpful in this moment of their writing – a director, another writer, a dramaturg and then we match-make,” Routh comments.
“Dogfight” (Benj Pasek and Justin Paul), “A Strange Loop” (Michael R. Jackson), and “Pass Over” by Antoinette Nwanduare examples of theater pieces that benefited by through the Fellows program. Kait Kerrigan (book- “The Great Gatsby”), Benjamin Velez (music/lyrics “Real Women Have Curves”) and Aurin Squire (book- “A Wonderful World: The Louis Armstrong Musical”.) are Fellows alumni. Current participation is comprised of 5 playwrights and 6 musical theater writers.
National Fellows applications are open now for the 2025-2026 Class (by ZOOM), starting their program in Fall 2025. Applications for the next New York-based Fellows class will open in Summer 2026 for sessions, starting in Fall 2026. The latest information on DGF Fellows program applications can be found by visiting DGF.org/Fellows or following @DGFound on all social platforms.
Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty in Hawaii for Roe Green Visiting Voices
Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty (“Ragtime”, “Anastasia”, “Rocky”, “A Man of No Importance”, “The Glorious Ones”…) comment: “We’ve had a warm and productive relationship with the DGF for many years…The Fellowship helps foster a sense of community among young writers, allowing them to nurture each other’s work and support one another.”
“Many of our Fellows have gone on to major careers, have won Pulitzer and Tony Awards and more, but they often come back to give master classes because they have received this early encouragement and want to pay it forward. It’s just one of the many ways the DGF supports writers, and one we are very proud of.”
The number of applications is vast. Now capped at 400, it’s still daunting to equitably review them all. Requirements do not include having been produced. Writers submit resumes and a show in development. Considerations are about the piece and its creators’ readiness in terms of execution and where they are in their careers.
“As the theater landscape changes, it’s more expensive to produce, people are less willing to take a chance. We’re in constant conversation about how to best connect writers with producers. Money is always an issue.” (Routh) 89 year-old President Emeritus, Gretchen Cryer says ‘Every writer is mid-career until she/he dies.’
Some of the 2022-2023 DGF Fellows, with their Chairs and Mentors, who were able to attend the 2023 DGF Gala.
Front Row (L to R): Gloria Oladipo, Jess McLeod (Musical Theater Chair), Zizi Majid, José Rivera (Playwriting Chair), SMJ, Aaron Coleman
Back Row (L to R): Nicholas Connors, Michael Korie (Musical Theater Chair), Tom Kitt (Musical Theater Mentor), Julián Mesri, Matthew Libby
The Foundation tenders Crisis Relief Grants and Bridge Grants. The first category encompasses dramatic and unexpected occurrence- eviction, medical emergency and the like. Financial assistance is available to support housing costs, medical bills, legal fees, and other extraordinary expenses. The second are one time need-based awards of $500 to support dramatists with non-emergency but essential daily life expenses including groceries, utility bills, mental health and wellness services and insurance payments. https://dgf.org/grants/
For both, one needs to be a professional dramatist whose history aligns with two out of a list of qualifications. https://dgf.org/grants/ I spoke with two writers who availed themselves of grants and later became Fellows.
Composer/lyricist Madeline Myers received two grants. Myers comes from a small town in Georgia with no theater exposure except her great aunt’s gifting VHS tapes of classic musicals. She took piano lessons and started writing songs in middle school. “…kind of angsty, teenage songs that weren’t very good, but I really liked how my brain felt when I was making something instead of interpreting what someone else had written.”
Madeline Myers speaks at the 2022 DGF Gala-Photo Rebecca Michelson
Myers attended a classic conservatory for composition learning craft and technique, drawn to the avant-garde. She came to New York, then deferred NYU’s Graduate Program to freelance as a music assistant. At the same time, the young woman began applying to be a DGF Fellow. Five years of “scrappy freelance jobs” and tenacious pursuit- “a lot of really earnest cold emails” secured a job as assistant to Alex Lacamoire on “Hamilton”’s transfer to Broadway.
“I made a promise to myself opening night that the next time I saw my name in a Broadway Playbill it would be as composer/lyricist.” Myers started teaching piano to young people, spent a year in the BMI Musical Theater Workshop, then immersed herself in writing. In 2018, she was commissioned to author a musical based on a best-selling Danish series The Devil’s Apprentice (Danis title “Djævelens Lærling”) The piece was produced in Denmark.
Her first DGF grant application, in 2021, was for the Steven Schwartzberg Mental Health and Wellness Grant established during the Pandemic, now covered under Bridge Grants. “My work is much better when my well being is better.” She received $1000.00 used for therapy. Later, there was a Bridge Grant. Myers’ musical Double Helix was being produced at Bay Street Theater on Long Island which meant giving up teaching and commuting to rehearse. “I was so grateful to have the financial support.”
The writer eventually spent a year as a DGF Fellow. She gushes about the people. I ask whether there are other ways in which she’s used the Foundation’s resources. “I’ve loved The Music Hall, having free rehearsal space in the most beautiful room you’ve ever been. I’ve used it more times than I can count for rehearsals, readings, and mini concerts.” Madeline Myers has a future production of Double Helix and two other projects in the works.
Composer/Lyricist Jaime Lozano received three life-saving grants. Raised in small town Mexico, he sang in church choir, learned to play guitar as a teenager, and went on to study opera. “I was a very shy kid with few friends until I realized music was my main language.” His only exposure to musicals was a yearly telecast of Jesus Christ Superstar at Easter. “I didn’t understand what it was and hated it.”
Jaime Lozano works on a new musical in the DGF Writing Rooms-Photo Rebecca J Michelson
Ironically, Superstar was the first show put on by his music school. He auditioned, played in the pit, and fell in love with the genre. The young man changed his major to composition because the show’s director, his mentor, was a composer. Never having paid attention in class, he learned some English by reading books on musical theater.
In 2008, Lozano became the first Mexican (Immigrant) to enter NYU’s Tisch Graduate Musical Theatre Writing Program- on full scholarship. At 28 years old, he could read, but spoke no English. It was rough going. His musical, “Children of Salt”, adapted from a Mexican play, was produced through reading in 2009 and by NYMF in 2016.
After graduation, there were survival jobs, but also some in his field. He wrote a Spanish adaptation of “The Wizard of Oz” produced Off Broadway and helped Lin Manuel Miranda transcribe his songs. (They met at NYU and remain friends. Lozano orchestrated a number of songs for the film of “In the Heights”.)
A lawyer hired to secure his Green Card took the money and ran forcing
the artist to return home. “But that’s when I met this beautiful, talented girl I would marry.” The couple came to New York on their honeymoon and decided to stay. (Florencia Cuenca is a writer and actress who recently starred in Real Women Have Curves) They had one suitcase, no winter clothes, and “I realized we were pregnant.”
“That’s when I first learned about the grants offered by Dramatists Guild
Foundation.” A DGF Crisis Relief Grant awarded Lozano several thousand dollars. He remembers going with his family to pick up the check and crying. “We had no idea how to survive.” When he applied for his Artist’s Visa, he requested and received a second grant to help alleviate legal costs. The third time was a special Pandemic Grant. “I’m so blessed to have their support.”
Lozano became a Fellow in the 2024/2025 Class. Besides fostering a sense of community, the artist learned “to be brave…Sometimes, especially with English being my second language, I am afraid, and I want all my writing to be “perfect”, “clear”, but just being brave and writing from the heart, putting everything on the page without editing myself in advance is the best way to start.”
There are several projects on burners at present. One exciting commissioned piece is musical about the artist Frieda Kahlo. (Lyrics-Neena Beber Book- Georgina Escobar) The piece already has a Tony Award winning director and producers attached.
Julia Mattison & Noel Carey (music and lyrics) and Marco Pennette (book) of “Death Becomes Her” at a DGF Salon
“Writers are the core entrepreneur that make theater possible. They need money, space and time. That’s our ethos. We want to support writers in everything we do.” (Rachel Routh)
The Dramatists Guild was awarded 2024 Tony Honors for Excellence in the Theater
A remarkable and eminently worthy organization. https://dgf.org
All uncredited photos Courtesy of Dramatists Guild Foundation
Opening: Dramatists and Donors applaud DGF receiving the Tony Honors for Excellence in the Theatre at the DGF’s 2024 Gala at Ziegfeld Ballroom- Photo Laurel Hinton
