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2010 RICHARD RODGERS AWARDS
TWO MUSICALS WIN COMPETITION

Buddy’s Tavern by Raymond De Felitta, Alison Louise Hubbard, and Kim Oler

The intent of the Richard Rodgers Award is to nurture the careers of talented composers and playwrights, and to have their musicals produced in New York City. Former award recipients include Maury Yeston (Nine), Jonathan Larson (Rent), Julie Taymor and Elliot Goldenthal (Juan Darien), Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty (Lucky Stiff), and Jeanine Tesori and Brian Crawley (Violet). Since 1980 sixty-six works have been produced. This year's jury included Stephen Sondheim (chair), Lynn Ahrens, John Guare, Sheldon Harnick, David Ives, Richard Maltby, Jr., and Lin-Manuel Miranda.

Buddy’s Tavern, based upon the film Two Family House and set in the 1950s, tells the story of an Italian-American factory worker on Staten Island, and his quest to run his own business – a bar where he can sing his heart out to his customers. Family pressures, race relations, unexpected love, and the struggle to achieve one's dreams, come alive in this new romantic musical comedy.

Rocket Science, based on the HBO movie by Jeffrey Blitz, tells the tale of sixteen-year-old Hal Hefner, life-long stutterer and oddball, and his determination to risk everything for love. Hal enters the world of high school speech and debate and learns what it means to find one’s true voice.

Richard Rodgers, elected to the Academy in 1955, endowed these awards in 1978. The awards provide financial support for productions, studio productions, or staged readings of original musicals by nonprofit theaters in New York City. The Richard Rodgers Awards are the Academy's only awards for which applications are accepted. Applications for the Richard Rodgers Awards may be downloaded here.

Winner Biographies

Patricia Cotter (book, Rocket Science) has written the book for several musicals, including Break Up Notebook: The Lesbian Musical, based on her play, Break Up Notebook (music and lyrics by Lori Scarlett); Fat (book and lyrics co-written with Kevin M. Mitchell) and Mulan, Jr. (stage adaptation of the Disney film Mulan). Her plays include Three: Best/Worst Flawed; The Girls; and Poison. Ms. Cotter has written for film and television and has received a Daytime Emmy Award for her writing.

The films of Raymond De Felitta book, Buddy’s Tavern) include Bronx Cheers (nominated for an Academy Award in 1991); Begin the Beguine; Café Society; Two Family House (winner of 2000 Sundance Audience Award); The Thing about My Folks; and City Island (winner of the Heineken Audience Award at the 2009 Tribeca Film Festival). Buddy’s Tavern is based upon De Felitta’s film, Two Family House.

Alison Louise Hubbard (lyrics, Buddy’s Tavern) and Kim Oler (music, Buddy’s Tavern) have collaborated on Little Women (1998 Richard Rodgers Stage Reading award), with a book by Sean Hartley; The Enchanted Cottage, (Director’s Choice Award at New York Musical Theatre Festival, 2004); Pets! – A Musical Revue; When the Cookie Crumbles; The Secret Garden; Harriet the Spy; Tom Sawyer; Little Women; Class Clown; Babes in Toyland. Mr. Oler won Emmy Awards in 2003 and 2005 for All My Children, Tracy Ullman Show, and Guiding Light. His recordings include Paul Winter Consort’s Missa Gaia. Ms. Hubbard wrote The Cop and The Anthem, and is a winner of the 2006 Kleban Award. Her recordings include Parachute Express and Jamie DeRoy and Friends. Kim and Alison are members of the Dramatists Guild and the BMI Lehman Engel Musical Theater Workshop, where they were awarded the BMI Foundation’s Jerry Harrington Award for Outstanding Creative Achievement in 2002. They were Artists in Residence at the New Harmony Project, New Harmony, IN, in 2007.

Jason Rhyne (lyrics, Rocket Science), a graduate of the North Carolina School of the Arts, has studied musical theater at Ithaca College. Credits include lyrics for a musical adaptation of the HBO film Rocket Science (music by Stephen Weiner, book by Patricia Cotter), which was featured in the Village Theatre's 2009 Festival of New Musicals; music and lyrics for the The MacGuffin, presented at the New York Musical Theatre Festival; and book, music and lyrics for an adaptation of the children's novel Littlejim. Jason is a former member of the BMI Musical Theatre Workshop, and recipient of a 2008 Jonathan Larson Award as a composer-lyricist.

Stephen A. Weiner (composer, Rocket Science) was the 2003 Richard Rodgers Award winner for Once Upon A Time in New Jersey (book and lyrics by Susan DiLallo). Steve received a Jonathan Larson Development Grant for The Hudsucker Proxy (book and lyrics by Glenn Slater). Along with Rocket Science, he has composed the scores for Iron Curtain (book by Susan DiLallo, lyrics by Peter Mills); newyorkers (lyrics by Glenn Slater), and Spittin’ Image (book by Karin Kasdin, lyrics by Laura Szabo Cohen). He is also the recipient of the ASCAP Richard Rodgers New Horizons Award. He has been nominated for Drama Desk, Obie, Lucille Lortel and Chicago Jeff Awards. He is a member of ASCAP and The Dramatists Guild.