Grey Gardens and 2 Other New Musicals Sprout Richard Rodgers Awards

Grey Gardens, currently in previews at Playwrights Horizons, is one of three new musicals to have won the 2006 Richard Rodgers Award for musical theatre.

Scott Frankel, Michael Korie and Doug Wright's Grey Gardens joins Michelle Elliott and Danny Larsen's The Yellow Wood and Chris Miller, Bill Rosenfield and Nathan Tysen's True Fans as a winner of the prestigious award. The latter two musicals will soon receive productions by nonprofit theatres in Manhattan.

A jury comprised of Lynn Ahrens, John Guare, Sheldon Harnick, Jeanine Tesori and John Weidman--under the chairmanship of Stephen Sondheim--selected the winning musicals. The Richard Rodgers Awards, "provide financial support for productions, studio productions, or staged readings by nonprofit theatres in New York City," according to press notes. In 1978, the awards were originally endowed by Rodgers, best known for his collaborations with Lorenz Hart and Oscar Hammerstein II. They are administered by the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Maury Yeston, Jonathan Larson and Ahrens and Flaherty are among previous recipients of the honor.

Grey Gardens, starring Christine Ebersole, Mary Louise Wilson, Matt Cavenaugh, Sara Gettelfinger and others, will open on March 7th. The show "explores the lives of Edith Bouvier Beale and her daughter Edie, reclusive mother and daughter living in a dilapidated 28-room mansion in East Hampton. It explores in song the idiosyncrasies and failed dreams of two lonely, eccentric women." It features a book by Wright (I Am My Own Wife), music by Scott Frankel and lyrics by Michael Korie.

The Yellow Wood concerns a 17 year-old skateboarder of Korean ancestry with Attention Deficit Disorder. It "tells the story of Adam's efforts to lead a life without his Ritalin medication, as he searches for his identity, while maneuvering his way through the maze of adolescence." True Fans "follows the adventures of three basketball fanatics, friends who bike from California to the Basketball Hall of Fame in Springfield, Massachusetts, on $10 a day;" it is based on the 1999 documentary of the same name.

Applications for the Richard Rodgers Awards may be obtained by sending a self-addressed, stamped envelope to the American Academy of Arts and Letters, 633 West 155 Street, New York, NY 10032 or downloaded from www.artsandletters.org.

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