The American Theatre Wing has announced this year's recipients of the Jonathan Larson Grant. Winners include multimedia artist Fouad Dakwar; playwright and songwriter Dan Fishback; writing partners Scott Gilmour and Claire McKenzie; composer, lyricist and librettist Adam J. Rineer; and playwright, songwriter and educator abs wilson.
“Each year, the Jonathan Larson Grants remind us just how bold and inventive the future of musical theater is,” Wing president Heather Hitchens said in a statement. “This year’s recipients are singular storytellers with unmistakable voices, and we’re honored to support them at this pivotal moment in their artistic journeys.”
Focused on supporting emerging musical-theater composers, lyricists and librettists, the Larson grant offers $20,000 in unrestricted funds to each winner, as well as a $2,500 Saw Island Foundation Recording Grant to support the production of a new demo.
Grant recipients will also have their work showcased at two presentations on March 23, the first at 6:30 p.m. by invitation and a second at 9 p.m. open to the public. Past winner Rona Siddiqui will be hosting the celebration. Patrick Sulken will music direct. Jenny Gorelick will serve as concert producer.
Dakwar was a finalist for the Kleban Prize and a Dramatists Guild Foundation Fellow. His punk-pop musical “Fouad of Nazareth” received a 2025 residency in the Johnny Mercer Foundation Writers Grove at Goodspeed and was a semifinalist for the 2025 Relentless Musical Award.
Fishback is the author of the plays “The Material World,” which imagines a family of Jewish socialist immigrants from the 1920s living with Madonna, Britney Spears and a contemporary gay “slacktivist”; and “You Will Experience Silence,” which reframes the Chanukah story in the context of the Iraq War. His musical “Dan Fishback Is Alive, Unwell & Living in His Apartment” was commissioned by Joe’s Pub at the Public Theater.
Scott Gilmour and Claire McKenzie have produced over 20 original works. Their most recent production, “Ceilidh,” was directed by 2025 Tony Award winner Sam Pinkleton, with Kris Kukul serving as musical supervisor. The two have been selected for the Johnny Mercer Writers Colony at Goodspeed Musicals on multiple occasions. Their musical “Hi, My Name Is Ben” was selected to be presented at the National Alliance for Musical Theatre’s 2019 festival of new work.
Rineer is currently an artist in residence at Ars Nova and the co-founder of the UNLIMITED Musical Project, which is dedicated to providing development space for marginalized theater writers of BIPOC/Global Majority, LGBTQIA+/Queer and their intersecting identities. Rineer’s musicals include “Third Sex: 1930s Transvestite Lieder,” “A Trip to the Moon” and the NAMT 15-minute musical contest winner “Obscene, Lewd, Lascivious and Filthy!”
In 2024 wilson received the 2024 Richard Rodgers Staged Reading Award for her musical “Lighthouse.” The show also won the 2024 Eugene O’Neill National Musical Theater Conference. Other musical theater work from wilson includes the chamber-style folk musical “Swamp Song” and “Kelly Nowak,” which tells the story of the disappearance of a 16-year-old girl through the points of view of her parents and her sister.
The Jonathan Larson Grant was created by the Jonathan Larson Performing Arts Foundation in 1997 in recognition of the life and work of the Tony- and Pulitzer Prize-winning musical theater composer Jonathan Larson. The Wing took over management of the program after the 2008 grants were awarded. Recent recipients include Tony and Pulitzer winner Michael R. Jackson, Tony winner Shaina Taub and Tony-winning teams Benj Pasek and Justin Paul and Tom Kitt and Brian Yorkey.
