Off Script with Dan Dwyer: Lynn Ahrens, Tony winner for "Ragtime, " on the new “Marie” (formerly “Little Dancer”)

Lynn Ahrens’s extensive credits for stage and screen include Broadway’s Ragtime, for which she won Tony, Drama Desk and Outer Critics Circle Awards. She was nominated for two Academy Awards and two Golden Globes for Twentieth Century Fox’s animated feature film Anastasia, and she wrote lyrics for its current hit Broadway stage adaptation. She wrote book and lyrics for Once On This Island, which just won the 2018 Tony for Best Revival of a Musical and earned her fourth Grammy nomination. She’s received the Oscar Hammerstein Award for Lifetime Achievement, the Olivier Award, and in 2015 she and long-time collaborator Stephen Flaherty were inducted into the Theater Hall of Fame. She was also nominated to the Songwriters Hall of Fame this year. Additional Broadway and regional theater includes: Seussical; Rocky; My Favorite Year; Chita Rivera: The Dancer's Life; Dessa Rose; A Man of No Importance; The Glorious Ones; Lucky Stiff; and Marie, which will make its West Coast Premiere at Seattle’s Fifth Avenue Theater in March.Ms. Ahrens wrote book and lyrics for Madison Square Garden’s “A Christmas Carol” (with music by Alan Menken). She is an Emmy Award winner and four-time Emmy nominee, recipient of the Lilly Award for Lyrics, and a mainstay songwriter and singer for “Schoolhouse Rock” (ABC-TV). She serves on Council for the Dramatists Guild of America and is a co-founder of the Dramatists Guild Fellows Program for Emerging Writers. www.ahrensandflaherty.com