May/Jun 2013: Musical Women
L-R: Kirsten Childs, Amanda Green, Julia Jordan, Lynn Ahrens, Joy Son

Kirsten Childs:  Tonight, I’ve prepared thirteen questions to ask you in honor of the fact that it’s 2013 (I hope there are no triskaidekaphobes out there). I’ve broken the questions down into three categories: the first category deals with beginnings—how you became a musical theatre writer; the second category deals with process—the nuts and bolts of what you do, and the third category deals with surviving in the musical theatre world as a person and also as a woman.

So let’s start with Lynn. When was the moment you realized that you were a musical theatre writer?

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Kirsten Childs
Kirsten Childs

wrote The Bubbly Black Girl Sheds Her Chameleon Skin (Obie, Kleban), Bella: An American Tall Tale (Frederick Loewe, Kennedy Prize Finalist, Audelco), Fly (with Rajiv Joseph and Bill Sherman), Funked Up Fairy TalesMiracle Brothers (Vineyard Theatre), Edge of Night (Playwrights Horizons Soundstage podcast series), Family Portraits: Aunt Lillian (Vineyard Theatre), and The Three Musketeers (The Acting Company, Oregon Shakespeare Festival).

Lynn Ahrens 
Lynn Ahrens 

won Tony, Drama Desk and Outer Critics Circle Awards for Best Score of Broadway’s Ragtime. She was nominated for two Academy Awards and two Golden Globes for the score of Twentieth Century Fox’s animated feature Anastasia, which she also adapted for Broadway. Her many additional Broadway and off-Broadway credits include Once On This Island (2018 Tony Award for Best Musical Revival); Seussical; Madison Square Garden’s A Christmas CarolMy Favorite Year, Rocky, A Man of No Importance, and more. She’s an Emmy winner and four-time Grammy nominee., co-founder of the DGF Fellows program and a Lifetime Member of the Dramatists Guild Council. In 2015, she and long-time collaborator Stephen Flaherty were inducted into the Theater Hall of Fame.
www.ahrensandflaherty.com

Amanda Green
Amanda Green

is a two-time Tony & Grammy nominated lyricist/composer. Broadway: Mr. Saturday Night (lyrics); Kiss Me Kate (additional book & lyrics), On The Twentieth Century (additional lyrics); Hands On A Hardbody (lyrics, co-composer); Bring It On (co-lyricist); High Fidelity (lyrics). Her original musical comedy Regency Girls premieres March 2025 at The Old Globe. She is co-writing lyrics for Crazy Rich Asians. TV: 2024 Tony Awards Opening Number (with Tom Kitt); Peter Pan Live. She is the first woman to serve as President of the Dramatists Guild.

Julia Jordan
Julia Jordan

is the recipient of the Kleban Award, Francesca Primus Prize, Jonathan Larson Award, Heideman Award, LeComte Nouy Award, ATT Onstage Award, and American Spirit Award. A member of New Dramatists and the Dramatists Guild Council, she is also one of the founders of the Lilly Awards. She holds an M. Phil. in Creative Writing from Trinity College, Dublin, and has taught playwriting at Primary Stages, Barnard College, and Columbia University.

Joy Son
Joy Son

musicals have been performed in the US and in Asia. As a South Korean-born composer based in NYC, she was the first female foreign composer to be commissioned to compose and orchestrate the original musical MANON for Japan’s biggest theater, Takarazuka Revue Company, for their 80 all-women cast and 23-piece orchestra, in their more than one-hundred-year history! For more info,
composedbyjoyson.com