CHERYL COONS: The Making of a Musical

An award-winning librettist and lyricist that serves on National Council of the Dramatists Guild of America. Cheryl has been a Resident Playwright at Chicago Dramatists since 2008, and serves as the company’s Director of New Musical Theatre Development. She has co-written more than a dozen musicals that have been developed and showcased at the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center’s National Music Theater Conference, the National Alliance for Musical Theatre’s Festival of New Works and the New York Musical Theatre Festival. Her original novelty songs have been featured on Good Morning America, the Today Show, and NPR’s Morning Edition. On this episode Cheryl breaks down the architecture of musical theatre, explains how getting someone to like a musical is like getting them to like sushi and shares Stephen Sondheim’s affinity for perfect rhyme.