The Dramatists Guild Foundation will honor Tony Award-winning Ragtime and Once On This Island writers Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty at its annual gala fundraiser, which will take place November 4 at the Ziegfeld Ballroom.
This year’s honorees also include Concord Theatricals President Sean Patrick Flahaven and TodayTix co-founders Brian Fenty and Merritt Baer.
Tony winner Kathleen Marshall will direct the evening that will celebrate Ahrens and Flaherty’s 30-year partnership, which launched with the 1988 Off-Broadway musical comedy Lucky Stiff. Their prolific career includes such musicals as Ragtime (1998 Tony Award for Best Original Score) and Once On This Island (2018 Tony Award for Best Revival of a Musical), as well as My Favorite Year, Seussical, Dessa Rose, The Glorious Ones, and Rocky. They received an Academy Award nomination for Best Original Song (“Journey to the Past”) for their work on the 1997 animated feature Anastasia, which was adapted for Broadway in 2017. Their latest musical, Marie, inspired by the iconic Degas sculpture of a young ballerina, was staged at Seattle’s 5th Avenue Theatre last spring. In 2014, Ahrens and Flaherty received the Oscar Hammerstein Award for Lifetime Achievement, and in 2015 they were inducted into the Theater Hall of Fame.
The gala supports DGF’s initiatives to foster the work of theatre writers at all stages of their careers, through educational programs, grants, stipends, and emergency aid to writers in need.
For ticket and benefit packages, visit DGF.org.
