Rachel G. Sheinkin

A playwright, lyricist and Tony Award winning librettist for musical theater, Rachel is often drawn to hybrid forms and experimental collaborations. Her work has appeared on and off Broadway, regionally and internationally, including most prominently in The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, with a score by William Finn, for which she received Tony and Drama Desk Awards for Book of a Musical. 

Other productions include Striking 12, a hybrid rock concert/musical written with and for the band GrooveLily (Lucille Lortel nomination for Outstanding Off-Broadway Musical); Sleeping Beauty Wakes, originally performed in both ASL and English in collaboration with Deaf West Theatre (LA Ovation Award for World Premiere Musical); book and lyrics for Blood Drive with music by fellow GMTWP faculty member, Joel Derfner (Bridewell Theater, London) and for Serenade with music by Nils Olaf Dolven (Jaradoa, NYC). New musical works in progress include (working titles) The River to the Fjord with music by Nils Olaf Dolven and An Invisible Drunk in the Suburbs with music by Tisch Arts Professor Mel Marvin. This year …Spelling Bee will be featured in the Broadway Center Stage series at the Kennedy Center.

Rachel’s writing has been supported with residencies, grants, and fellowships from, among others: MacDowell, VCCA, Manhattan Theatre Club, The National Alliance for Musical Theatre, The Eugene O’Neill National Music Theater Conference, Goodspeed Opera House, and The Baryshnikov Arts Foundation; and at venues including Second Stage Theater; Barrington Stage Co; The Old Globe; TheatreWorks, Palo Alto; Center Theatre Group, LA; The Guthrie Theater, La Jolla Playhouse, Clubbed Thumb, and McCarter Theatre Center. 

A member of Dramatists Guild, Rachel currently serves on The American Theatre Wing’s Tony Nominating Committee. As a teacher, she loves encouraging new waves of artists to explore both craft and voice, stretching their own boundaries and that of the form. She also enjoys working as a dramaturg and mentor for earlier career writers, which she has done most recently for Clubbed Thumb, Toronto’s Musical Stage Company, and independently. Rachel is a graduate of Tisch GMTW’s Cycle 10, and previously received a BA from Brown University and an MFA in playwriting from Yale School of Drama, where she has also taught classes in libretto writing for musical theater.