Graduate Musical Theatre Writing
William Finn
Adjunct Faculty Composer/Lyricist |
Biography
William Finn is the writer and composer of
Falsettos, for which he received two Tony Awards, Best Book of a Musical (with James Lapine) and Best Original Score. He has also written and composed
In Trousers, March of the Falsettos and
Falsettoland (Outer Critics Circle Award for Best Musical, two Los Angeles Drama Critics Awards, two Drama Desk Awards, the Lucille Lortel Award and Guggenheim Fellowship in Playwriting). Mr. Finn wrote the lyrics to Graciela Daniele's
Tango Apasionado (music by the great Astor Piazzolla) and, with Michael Starobin, the music to Lapine's version of
The Winter's Tale. His musical
Romance in Hard Times was presented at The Public Theater. Recently, he wrote
Painting You for Love's Fire, a piece commissioned and performed by the Acting Company, based on Shakepeare's sonnets. For television, Mr. Finn provided the music and lyrics for the Ace Award-winning HBO cartoon
Ira Sleeps Over, Tom Thumb and Thumbelina, Pokey Little Puppy's First Christmas and, with Ellen Fitzhugh, two
Brave Little Toaster cartoons. Mr. Finn has written for
Vogue,
Harper's Bazaar and
The New Yorker. A graduate of Williams College, where he was awarded the Hutchinson Fellowship for Musical Composition, Finn now teaches a weekly master class at the NYU Tisch Graduate Program in Musical Theatre Writing. His most recent projects include
Elegies, A Song Cycle (Lincoln Center),
The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee which had a three-year run on Broadway and has been produced nationally and all over the world, and the upcoming
Little Miss Sunshine with James Lapine. For the past four years he has been the Artistic Head of the Musical Theatre Lab at the Barrington Stage Company in Pittsfield, Massachusetts.
