Theatre Now Hosts Master Class With Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty

Theatre Now's next Industry Night will be held on Monday, November 25th at 6:30pm, featuring a Master Class with Tony-winning writing team Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty. The evening will include songs by TNNY Musical Writers Lab members Andrew Strano & Yuriko Shibata, Carrie Caffrey & Earl Meadows, Jessie Field & James Martinez Salem, and Will Lacker & Dylan Glatthorn.

The remaining Industry Night this year will feature a Master Class with Jonathan Larson Award winner Anna K. Jacobs (Teeth, POP!). 2025 dates include Master Classes with Janine McGuire & Arri Lawton Simon (The Bubble) and Mindi Dickstein (Little Women, Benny & Joon) as well as a Find Your Dream Collaborator Mix & Mingle. More information can be found at www.tnny.org/industrynights.

Industry Nights are held in Midtown Manhattan and are free for Theatre Now members. There is a suggested donation of $10 for non-members. Annual individual memberships start at $25 or only $15 for students and seniors. Reservations are required as space is limited. To RSVP for any Industry Night, go to https://form.jotform.com/TNNY/industry-night-series.

Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty are considered the foremost theatrical songwriting team of their generation. They won Broadway's triple crown—Tony Award, Drama Desk Award and Outer Critics Circle Award—as well as two Grammy nominations for their score of the Broadway musical Ragtime. They received two Academy Award nominations and two Golden Globe nominations for the songs and score of Twentieth Century Fox's animated feature film, Anastasia, which they also adapted into Broadway’s hit musical, Anastasia. In 2014 they received the Oscar Hammerstein Award for Lifetime Achievement, and in 2015 they were inducted into the Theater Hall of Fame. Their collaborations include Lucky Stiff, Once on This Island, My Favorite Year, Seussical, A Man of No Importance, Rocky, and many others.

Founded in 2013, Theatre Now New York (TNNY) is a non-profit organization dedicated to the development, production, publication, and circulation of short and long-form musicals by providing ongoing support for writers and their work in order to nurture voices and forms that push the boundaries of musical theatre. TNNY produces developmental productions of new works as well as the annual SOUND BITES Festival of 10-Minute Musicals. Published in 2019, The 10-Minute Musical: an Anthology from the SOUND BITES Festival collects 25 short musicals from the first six years of the festival, all of which are licensed for production through an ongoing partnership with Music Theatre International (MTI).

Formed in 2019, the Theatre Now Musical Writers Lab is a community of 20 writing teams who meet regularly to work on the development of new musicals. This is a highly skilled, active, and collaborative group focused on embracing and fostering the diversity of musical theatre. The current Lab consists of 35 librettists, lyricists, and composers from the NYC area and around the world from diverse backgrounds ‒ straight and gay, cis and trans, young and old, rural and urban, white, Black, Latinx, and Asian. It includes members of ASCAP, BMI, and the Dramatists Guild; an Alan Menken Award winner; a Fulbright Scholar; and the first ever Black List Musical Film Fellow as well as early-career writers. This year, shows from Lab members have been featured in the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, the Eugene O'Neill National Music Theatre Conference (NMTC), and, for the third year in a row, the National Alliance for Musical Theatre (NAMT) Festival of New Musicals.

Japanese composer Yuriko Shibata (she/her) and Australian playwright and lyricist Andrew Strano (they/them) met at NYU-Tisch’s Graduate Musical Theatre Writing Program. Members of the NYC Artist Corps, their musical SKIN—a queer reimagining of the myth of the Selkie—debuted Off-Broadway at Rattlestick Playwrights Theatre. Yuriko is also a member of the BMI Lehman Engel Musical Theatre workshop and holds a B.Mus (Tokyo College of Music). Andrew completed a M.A. in Writing for Performance (VCA, Melbourne University) and underwent their studies in the U.S. as the recipient of a Fulbright Scholarship. www.yuriko-shibata.com, andrewstrano.com

Carrie Caffrey and Earl Marrows are a team of musical theatre writers based somewhere in between Brooklyn, New York, and Melbourne, Australia. They have been featured in the Lincoln Center Broadway’s Future Songbook Series, Rattlestick Playwrights’ Theater’s Village Song, Tisch’s New Studio on Broadway, 54 Below, NYMF, and at venues internationally including London’s Bread & Roses Theatre, Musical Theatre Radio, York University in Toronto and the Under the Arch Incubator in St. Louis. Caffrey & Marrows are both graduates of NYU Tisch’s Graduate Musical Theatre Writing Program. www.carriecaff.com, www.earlmarrows.com 

Jessie Field and James Martinez Salem are an award-winning queer musical theatre writing team who center queer joy and body diversity. Their show Charlotte Lucas is 27 and Not Dead is a two-time NAMT Finalist & Festival Committee Recommendation and Winner of the Musicals Now Competition. Their commission, Ziggy, Stardust & Me was the inaugural production at the Prebys Theatre and workshopped at Diversionary Theatre in San Diego. They’re currently developing Fat Girl Starving, a pop-punk rebellion against anti-fat bias in America. www.jessiefield.com, www.jamessalemmusicals.com 

Dylan Glatthorn (music & lyrics) and Will Lacker (book & lyrics) are a New York City-based writing team. Original full-length musicals include The Pelican (2022 NAMT Festival, 2020 Frank Young Fund grant recipient), Pottersfield (2024 National Foundation for Musical Theatre grant recipient), and Edison. Original short one-act musicals (all licensed through MTI) include Bittersweet Lullaby, Starshine, and Peach Melba (2023 Prospect Musical Theater Lab). They are members of the TNNY Musical Writers Lab, ASCAP, and the Dramatists Guild of America, Inc. www.dylanglatthorn.com, www.wlacker.com 

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