Program Chair

Michael Korie

DGF Fellows Program Musical Theater Chair

Michael Korie received The Marc Blitzstein Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters for his lyrics in musicals and his librettos in operas. His collaboration with Tom Kitt and James Lapine, Flying Over Sunset, premiered at Lincoln Center Theater this season with a Tony-nominated score. Korie wrote the lyrics to composer Scott Frankel’s music for the Broadway productions of War Paint and Grey Gardens, with books by Doug Wright, the Off- Broadway production of Far From Heaven, book by Richard Greenberg, all directed by Michael Grief, and Happiness with a book by John Weidman, direction by Susan Stroman. Their shows have been nominated for Tony and Drama Desk Awards, received The Outer Critics Circle Award, and been produced on Broadway, Playwrights Horizons, Lincoln Center Theater, throughout the USA, and internationally. For opera he adapted Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath composed by Ricky Ian Gordon. Also with Gordon, The Garden of the Finzi-Continis premiered this past season at New York City Opera and National Yiddish Folksbiene-Theatre with upcoming productions in Europe. Korie’s original librettos to operas composed by Stewart Wallace include Harvey Milk, Where’s Dick?, Kabbalah, and Hopper’s Wife. Harvey Milk returned in a new version premiered to acclaim this year at Opera Theater of Saint Louis. Korie’s operas have been produced at San Francisco Opera, Houston Grand Opera, Minnesota Opera, New York City Opera, BAM Next Wave Festival, Opera Theater of Saint Louis, Michigan Opera, and abroad in Germany and Australia. Korie’s lyrics have received the Edward Kleban Prize, Jonathan Larson Award, and the ASCAP Richard Rodgers Award. His songs with composer Scott Frankel were featured at Lincoln Center’s American Songbook series at Jazz at Lincoln Center, and at The Kennedy Center’s Millennium Stage Broadway Today. Korie co-chairs the Dramatists Guild Opera Committee which produced the short film “Credit the Librettist.” He teaches musical-theater writing at Yale University and Columbia University School of the Arts, and leads collaboration seminars for American Opera Project and American Lyric Theater. Korie serves on the advisory committee of The American Theatre Wing.

Back To Fellows