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Kait Kerrigan |
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The 19th annual Kleban Award for most promising musical theatre librettist was presented to ASCAP member Kait Kerrigan at a private event held in New York City on June 1.
New Dramatists administer the Kleban Awards on behalf of The Kleban Foundation, which was established in 1988 under the will of Edward L. Kleban, best known as the Tony and Pulitzer Prize award winner for the musical A Chorus Line. The will made provision for two annual Awards of $100,000 to be given to the most promising librettist and lyricist in American Musical Theatre.
The judges making the final determination this year were Sheldon Harnick (Tony Award and Pulitzer Prize-winning lyricist of Fiddler on the Roof and Fiorello!), 12-time Grammy Award-winning original cast recording producer Thomas Z. Shepard (Sweeney Todd, La Cage aux Folles, No No Nanette) and Emmy Award-winning and Tony-nominated playwright and screenwriter Sherman Yellen (The Rothschilds, Oh! Calcutta!).
Kerrigan is a bookwriter, playwright and lyricist based in New York City. Her musical Henry and Mudge, written with composer Brian Lowdermilk, had an Off-Broadway run at the Lucille Lortel Theatre in 2006 and was commissioned by TheatreworksUSA. Since she and Lowdermilk began collaborating in 2002, they have also written The Unauthorized Autobiography of Samantha Brown, The Woman Upstairs, Wrong Number, Tales from the Bad Years and a web-based musical called The Freshman Experiment. This season, The Unauthorized Autobiography of Samantha Brown received a developmental production at the Orange County Performing Arts Center, directed by Daniel Goldstein and produced by Beth Williams and Broadway Across America. This summer, their song cycle Tales from the Bad Years will be represented at the New Works Festival at Theatreworks in Palo Alto, CA. Kerrigan's musicals, as well as plays Imaginary Love and Transit, have been developed by the La Jolla Playhouse, Primary Stages, Lark Theatre Company, Manhattan Theatre Club, Perry-Mansfield New Works Festival, National Alliance of Musical Theater Conference, CAP21, and Goodspeed Opera House. She was awarded the Jonathan Larson Award for her lyrics and a 2004-2005 Dramatists Guild Fellowship. She is a member of the BMI Advanced Musical Theatre Writing Workshop, ASCAP, Dramatists Guild, and is a graduate of Barnard College. For more information visit www.kerrigan-lowdermilk.com.
