Lynn Nottage (22 productions)
Ken Ludwig (17, 1 co-credit)
Heidi Schreck (16)
August Wilson (15)
Selina Fillinger (13)
Kate Hamill (13)
Jeffrey Hatcher (13)
Lauren Gunderson (12, 5 co-credits)
Martyna Majok (12)
Stefano Massini/Ben Power (12)
Howard Ashman (10)
James Ijames (10)
Bob Martin (10)
Larissa FastHorse (9)
Harvey Fierstein (9)
Joe Masteroff (9)
Dominique Morisseau (9)
Douglas McGrath (8)
Thomas Meehan (8)
Karen Zacarías (8, 2 co-credits)
Lynn Nottage returns to the top of this list, which she dominated last year as well, after popping on and off the list since 2016. She earns the top spot on the strength not only of Clyde’s, but a rich catalogue of popular works, including Sweat and Intimate Apparel. Heidi Schreck and Stefano Massini match their Top 10 Play ranking, because they’ve only got one play in circulation. Other names on this list include POTUS’s Selina Fillinger, who also has Something Clean at Cleveland’s Dobama Theatre next March; Larissa FastHorse, who has For the People now at Minneapolis’s Guthrie Theater; James Ijames, who has The Most Spectacularly Lamentable Trail of Miz Martha Washington at Minneapolis’s Mixed Blood next March; and Martyna Majok, who also has productions of Cost of Living and is doing the book for the new Gatsby musical at American Repertory Theatre.
The big trend we’ve noticed on this list is the preponderance of literary adapters and book writers for musicals—both are usually part of the mix but they’re more prominent this time around. The first cohort is led by Ken Ludwig, who in addition to his Lend Me a Tenor franchise now has various Sherlock Holmes plays, including Baskerville, making the rounds; he is followed closely by Jeffrey Hatcher, who has his own Sherlock play, Holmes and Watson, as well as a version of Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde. Previous list topper Lauren Gunderson is also represented, both with original plays and a Jane Austen spinoff franchise (with Margot Melcon), as is Kate Hamill, who has branched out from Austen adaptations with her own feminist take on Sherlock Holmes (Ms. Holmes & Ms. Watson: Apt 2B) and Dracula (the cheekily titled Dracula: A Feminist Revenge Play, Really).
The book writers are partly a bittersweet memorial list—Joe Masteroff (Cabaret and She Loves Me), Howard Ashman (Little Shop of Horrors, various Disney musicals, also a new staging of God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater at Florida’s freeFall Theatre), Thomas Meehan (Elf The Musical, as well as Annie and Chaplin), Douglas McGrath (Beautiful)—and a few still-with-us scribes like Bob Martin (Elf and The Prom) and Harvey Fierstein (not only Torch Song but Kinky Boots, La Cage aux Folles, and Newsies).
An American theatre whose programming diet comprises musicals and literary adaptations alongside new plays, employing living writers while honoring the still relevant work of the past? (Albeit, it should be noted, the fairly recent past, as Shakespeare is the only “canonical” writer we exclude here; you’ll have to pore through the season listings to find Williams, Beckett, Childress, Molière, et al.) The balance among these elements may shift from year to year, but it’s a bargain we’ll take.
