Grey Gardens, The Yellow Wood, and True Fans Win Richard Rodgers Awards
in Grey Gardens
(Photo © Joan Marcus)
Grey Gardens, The Yellow Wood, and True Fans are the winners of the 2006 Richard Rodgers Awards for musical theater, presented by the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
Grey Gardens, which was written by Scott Frankel (music), Michael Korie (lyrics), and Doug Wright (book), is based on the 1975 documentary about heiress Edith Bouvier Beale and her daughter Edie, who ended up living in a dilapidated Long Island mansion. The show, starring Christine Ebersole, Mary Louise Wilson, and Sara Gettelfinger, is currently in previews at Playwrights Horizons, with an official opening on March 7.
The Yellow Wood, by Michelle Elliott (book and lyrics) and Danny Larsen (music and lyrics), looks at the life of Adam, a 17-year-old skateboarder of Korean ancestry who tries to battle attention deficit disorder without the use of Ritalin.
True Fans, by Chris Miller (music), Nathan Tysen (lyrics), and Bill Rosenfeld (book), is inspired by the 1999 documentary of the same name about three basketball fanatics who bike from California to the Basketball Hall of Fame in Springfield, Massachusetts.
The jury for this year’s awards were Stephen Sondheim (chairman), Lynn Ahrens, John Guare, Sheldon Harnick, Jeanine Tesori, and John Weidman.
