NEW YORK, NY – Two winners have been selected for the 2023 Richard Rodgers Award for Musical Theater: Lewis Loves Clark by Dylan MarcAurele and Mike Ross and Marie in Tomorrow Land by Maggie-Kate Coleman and Erato A. Kremmyda. 

Both musicals will receive funding towards a staged reading at a New York City-based non-profit theatre. These two musicals were chosen by a jury of industry professionals, including David Lang (chair), Lynn Ahrens, Kristoffer Diaz, Mindi Dickstein, Amanda Green, Michael R. Jackson, Richard Maltby, Jr., and John Weidman.

Previous recipients of The Richard Rodgers Award include Maury Yeston (Nine), Jonathan Larson (Rent), Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty (Lucky Stiff), Jeanine Tesori and Brian Crawley (Violet), Scott Frankel, Michael Korie, and Doug Wright (Grey Gardens), Dave Malloy (Natasha, Pierre & the Great Comet of 1898), and Anaïs Mitchell (Hadestown).
 

Lewis Loves Clark is a historical tragicomedy about the famous Corps of Discovery expedition. Combining bluegrass, folk, and pop, this epic musical charts the uneasy alliance of Meriwether Lewis (a depressed closeted alcoholic), William Clark (just breathtakingly oblivious), Sacagawea (permanently exasperated), and York (who would rather be birdwatching) as they grapple with the perils of exploration, infatuation, colonization, the terrible birth of our modern nation, and the torture and hope of the unknown.

Marie in Tomorrow Land, created in collaboration with director/choreographer Sam Pinkleton, is a modular ensemble musical in which a group of human survivors and a pack of radioactive boars, all bearing the name Marie Curie, find themselves trapped in the remains of a Chernobyl-inspired amusement park in the immediate aftermath of a global nuclear event. With only a theme-park character Marie as their guide, they navigate the ruins, encountering the wondrous effects and devastating repercussions of Curie’s work while piecing together their histories and futures: as humans, as survivors, and as Marie Curie.

The Richard Rodgers Awards were created and endowed by Richard Rodgers in 1978 for the development of the musical theatre. These awards subsidize full productions, studio productions, and staged readings by nonprofit theatres in New York City of works by composers and writers who are not already established in this field. The winners are selected by a jury of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. 

The American Academy of Arts and Letters was founded in 1898 as an honor society of the country’s leading architects, artists, composers, and writers. The Academy seeks to foster and sustain an interest in Literature, Music, and the Fine Arts by administering over 70 awards and prizes, exhibiting art and manuscripts, funding performances of new works of musical theatre, purchasing artwork for donation to museums across the country, and presenting talks and concerts.