The Wild Party's Andrew Lippa will receive 2000's Gilman & Gonzalez-Falla Theatre Foundation Award Oct. 30 at the Vivian Beaumont Theatre at Lincoln Center. The $25,000 cash award recognizes promising composers and lyricists creating new American musical theatre.

Lippa's production of Wild Party premiered at the Manhattan Theatre Club Feb. 24, 2000, weeks earlier than the Broadway staging of Michael John LaChiusa’s version of the same Joseph Moncure March's 1928 poem. (LaChiusa is a former Gonzalez-Falla winner himself).

Prior to Wild Party, Lippa provided additional songs for the recent revival of You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown and did the arrangements for the same. His john & jen [sic] was produced by Carolyn Rossi-Copeland at the Lamb's Theater in 1995 and recorded by Varese Sarabande.

Receiving $1000 to $5000 cash commendation prizes are Kirsten Childs (The Bubbly Black Girls Sheds Her Chameleon Skin), Martin Sylvestri, Joel Higgins, John Bucchino, David Evans and Bill Russell (Side Show).

This year's Board of Advisors, who chose the winners, were Sondra Gilman, Celso Gonzalez-Falla, Lincoln Center Artistic Director Andre Bishop, composer Jerry Herman, producer and director Gregory Mosher, director Robert Falls and advertising executive Jon Wilner. Past recipients of Gilman & Gonzalez-Falla Theatre Foundation Awards include Douglas Cohen (No Way To Treat a LadyBed and Sofa, Night Governess), Craig Carnelia (Is There Life After High School?), Louis Rosen, Jeffrey Lunden and Arthur Pearlman (Wings), Michael John LaChiusa (Hello Again, Marie Christine), Brian Crawley and Jeanine Tesori (Violet), Jason Robert Brown (Songs for a New World, Parade), Ray Leslee (Avenue X) and Robert Lindsay Nassif (Honky Tonk Highway, Elliot Ness in Cleveland).

-- By Christine Ehren