鈥淲riters are everything,鈥� Brian Stokes Mitchell told 半岛体育. 鈥淚t begins with the writer, it ends with the writer.鈥�
And so the cr猫me de la cr猫me of Broadway gathered November 4 to support them at the annual gala for the Dramatists Guild Foundation. As the DGF motto goes 鈥淢ost people say it has to be seen to be believed, but at DGF we say it has to be believed to be seen.鈥� DGF is the only organization that supports every theatre writer in America, believing in their stories and their visions and offering financial support, mentorship, and other resources to ensure their work is seen.
The 2019 gala honored Tony Award鈥搘inning writers Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty鈥攚ho also founded the DGF Fellows program for up-and-coming writers鈥攁s well as TodayTix founders Brian Fenty and Merritt Baer and Concord Theatricals President Sean Patrick Flahaven.
The evening, hosted by Jason Alexander, celebrated the contributions of writers bolstered by DGF (including Ahrens and Flaherty) while raising money to support DGF programs. From financial aid via grants, the DGF Fellows (in which established writers mentor new voices), the free space of the Music Hall, the Roe Green Traveling Masters that brings writing greats to teach across the country, and the New Voices initiative to unite teaching artists and students, the non-profit, in the words of Flaherty, 鈥渋s about honoring the past and giving back in the present and, in terms of talent and funding, it allows us to go forward.鈥�
Which is why he and Ahrens, along with Janet Neipris, founded DGF Fellows in 2000. 鈥淧art of the reason was not just to teach writers how to write but it was to make clear to them that there was a community of writers who will support them and one another just the way we were supported when we were first starting out,鈥� Ahrens said from the stage.
In fact, she shared a number of lessons passed to her from her mentors:
鈥淪tephen Sondheim said, 鈥業f you鈥檙e writing a farce, even the ballads need to be funny.鈥� And it鈥檚 about tone. He [also] wrote notes of recommendation to people about us without every telling us he was doing it.鈥�
鈥淧eter Stone, who said if you write two jokes in a row and the first one gets the bigger laugh, you cut the second joke.鈥�
鈥淢aury Yeston, who taught me about three-act structure using an image of a plank of wood and three nails and a handful of rubber bands and it works, that鈥檚 all I can say.鈥�
鈥淎lfred Uhry, who heard a very early draft of Once On This Island and we had comedy songs鈥擨 can鈥檛 even describe it, they were practically tap dancing on the island鈥攁nd he very simply and quietly said, 'You know you should just let the show be what it wants to be.'鈥�
鈥淢artin Charnin. He critiqued us one day and he was in a really bad mood, we learned later he had had a bad day, and he said that we were nothing but Sondheim clones and that our show was undirectable and unproduceable, and that taught us the power of rewrites. We rewrote and rewrote and rewrote and that was our first produced show, Lucky Stiff.鈥�
鈥淎nd of course Terrence McNally, who never mentored us exactly, but when we first did Once On This Island Off-Broadway we thought we each got a separate handwritten note from this famous playwright named Terrence McNally, who we had never met. And he congratulated us and he said how much he admired our work and then a number of years later we went on to write three shows with him. So it just gives you an idea of the generosity that matters so much to us all as writers.鈥�
But Ahrens and Flaherty have also imparted wisdom.
鈥淵ou always say you didn鈥檛 teach us anything,鈥� said DGF Fellow alum Justin Paul from the stage. 鈥淚鈥檒l tell you what you taught us: You told us that our songs didn鈥檛 need to go from A to Z. 鈥� That maybe let one song go from A to B and the next from B to C, because that鈥檚 writing a musical.鈥� In gratitude, he and writing partner Benj Pasek dueted on 鈥淲aving Through a Window鈥� from their smash hit Dear Evan Hansen.
The evening also featured performances by Ciara Ren茅e singing 鈥淥ver the Rainbow,鈥� Betsy Wolfe singing 鈥淣ot a Day Goes By鈥� from Merrily We Roll Along, Betty Buckley singing 鈥淢emory鈥� from Cats, Christiane Noll singing 鈥淏ack to Before鈥� from Ragtime, Michael Arden singing 鈥淪treets of Dublin鈥� from A Man of No Importance, Liz Callaway singing 鈥淛ourney to the Past鈥� from Anastasia, and Mitchell singing 鈥淚 Was Here鈥� from The Glorious Ones.
As Mitchell said, 鈥淢y drama teacher drilled into my head that the actor鈥檚 first obligation is to the writer.鈥� And as DGF reminds us, so is ours.
Flip through photos of the gala celebration:
