Eric Price and Phillip Christian Smith Receive 2026 Kleban Prize for Musical Theatre

The Kleban Foundation has announced the recipients of the 36th annual Kleban Prize for Musical Theatre. The 2026 Kleban Prize for the most promising musical theatre lyricist has been awarded to Eric Price. The 2026 Kleban Prize for the most promising musical theatre librettist has been awarded to Phillip Christian Smith. The Kleban Foundation will present the prizes on Monday, February 2 at 5PM in a private ceremony (by invitation only) hosted by ASCAP and BMI at ASCAP (250 W. 57th St, NYC). Featuring musical performances from work by this year's prize recipients, the event will be hosted by Tony Award winners and Kleban board members Richard Maltby, Jr. and Maury Yeston.

Since its inception, Kleban Prize winners have been selected by judging panels comprised of the theatre's most respected artists and administrators. The trio of Tony-nominated judges making the final determination this year were actors Eden Espinosa (Lempicka, Wicked) and Amber Gray (Hadestown, Natasha, Pierre, & the Great Comet of 1812), and director Anne Kauffman (The Sign in Sidney Brustein's Window, Mary Jane).

The Kleban Foundation was established in 1988 under the will of Edward L. Kleban, best known as the Tony and Pulitzer Prize winning lyricist of the musical A Chorus Line. Kleban's will made provisions for annual prizes, which in recent years have totaled $100,000 each, payable over two years, to be given to the most promising lyricist and librettist in American musical theatre. For 35 years, the Kleban Prize has recognized and honored some of the American musical theatre's brightest developing talents. 

"The Kleban Prize for Musical Theatre is one of the theatre's most distinctive honors,” says Tony Award winner Richard Maltby Jr., President of the Kleban Foundation. “Today, Ed Kleban's legacy may be more important than ever in supporting the creators of tomorrow's American musicals. Ed Kleban recognized that theatrical wordsmiths have the hardest time supporting themselves while honing their craft, and so the Kleban awards are specifically for librettists and lyricists. It is notable that the Kleban Prize is not given to a specific work, as other awards are, but instead, it is given for work yet to be written. With a uniquely generous endowment, the Kleban Prize identifies, celebrates and supports promising writing talent in the theatre, just when emerging writers -- and established writers -- need help the most. Kleban Prize winners are going to define the art form for years to come. The Kleban Foundation is proud to carry on Ed Kleban's enlightened legacy.” 

Over more than three decades, the annual Kleban Prize for Musical Theatre has awarded over $6,000,000 to 84 artists who collectively have garnered nine Tony Awards (with nearly 30 Tony nominations), 59 Emmy Awards, three Grammy Awards, 11 Drama Desk Awards, 11 Outer Critics Circle Awards, five Obie Awards, two Olivier Awards, and two Pulitzer Prizes. The list of previous Kleban Prize winners includes Shaina Taub (Suffs) Lisa Kron (Fun Home), Robert L. Freedman and Steven Lutvak (A Gentleman's Guide To Love and Murder), David Lindsay-Abaire (Kimberly Akimbo, Shrek), Jason Robert Brown (Parade, The Last Five Years), John Bucchino (A Catered Affair, It's Only Life), Gretchen Cryer (I'm Getting My Act Together and Taking It on the Road, The Last Sweet Days of Isaac), Michael Korie (Grey Gardens, Happiness), Jeff Marx and Robert Lopez (Avenue Q), Michael John LaChiusa (Giant, See What I Wanna See, The Wild Party), Glenn Slater (The Little Mermaid) and John Weidman (Pacific Overtures, Road Show, Assassins). For a complete listing of Kleban Prize winners, see the list at the end of this document. 

ABOUT THE 2026 KLEBAN PRIZE WINNERS

2026 Kleban Prize winner, most promising musical theatre lyricist Eric Price is a lyricist and librettist whose work BroadwayWorld calls “essential listening for any true musical theatre fan” and Talkin' Broadway describes as the “hope for well-made theatre songs in the post-Sondheim world.” He has written the lyrics and book for The Violet Hour, Radioactive, Presto Change-o, Around the World, Hello Out There, Emma, The Sixth Borough, and contributed additional material for Clue, which has toured the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, and is produced worldwide. He was also a songwriter on the Apple TV+ series Central Park. With his longtime collaborator Will Reynolds, Eric won the Fred Ebb Award for Musical Theatre Writing and a Dramatists Guild Musical Theatre Fellowship. Together they produced the all-star studio cast album of The Violet Hour, which has received millions of streams, inspired a companion documentary, and was named Best Cast Recording of the Year by the Broadway Radio Show. For many years, Eric was the assistant to Broadway icon Hal Prince. He received an MFA from NYU and is a member of the Dramatists Guild, the Recording Academy, and a professor of musical theatre at Pace University and Molloy University/CAP21. He is represented by WME. www.ericpriceonline.com

2026 Kleban Prize winner, most promising musical theatre librettist Phillip Christian SMITH is a resident member of New Dramatists 2023-2030, a Sloan Commission Playwright at Ensemble Studio Theater, a Dramatists Guild Foundation Fellow, a Fire This Time Festival Playwright, a Fresh Ground Pepper Playground Playgroup member, a Tennessee Williams Scholar at Sewanee (current staff), a Roe Green Commission Playwright with Cleveland Playhouse, and a Playwrights Realm and Lambda Literary Fellow. Attendee: Winter Playwrights Retreat, The Outrage: A Queer Writers Residency, Florida Rep PlayLab, and The Valdez Conference. Finalist: PlayPenn, Trustus, Bay Area Playwrights Foundation, and National Playwrights Conference at The O'Neill. Founding member and 1/5th of The Omnivores theater collective. He teaches acting at Pace University and Hunter College, where he has also taught playwriting. He holds an MFA in Acting from Yale School of Drama, an MFA in Playwriting from Hunter College, and a BFA from University of New Mexico. www.phillipchristiansmith.com