Lynn Ahrens (born October 1, 1948) is an American writer and lyricist for the musical theatre, television and film. She has collaborated with Stephen Flaherty for many years. She won the Tony Award, Drama Desk Award, and Outer Critics Circle Award for the Broadway musical Ragtime and was nominated for two Academy Awards and two Golden Globe Awards for the animated Twentieth Century Fox film "Anastasia." She is a mainstay writer for ABC-TV's "Schoolhouse Rock."
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Ahrens was born in New York City, graduated from Neptune High School on the Jersey shore, and graduated from Syracuse University with a degree in Journalism and English. She is Jewish. She began a career in advertising as a copywriter but was invited to work on a children's television show, and began writing songs for "Schoolhouse Rock". She subsequently worked as a freelance composer and singer of commercial music, and wrote and produced shows for children's television. She began writing for the musical theater in 1982.
Ahrens met Stephen Flaherty at the BMI Workshop in 1982 and they started working together the following year. Their first musical together was Lucky Stiff, which premiered Off-Broadway at Playwrights Horizons in April 1988. Their next musical was Once on This Island, which premiered on Broadway in 1990 and which was nominated for eight Tony Awards. My Favorite Year opened at the Vivian Beaumont Theatre in Lincoln Center in October 1992 but ran for only 36 performances.
Ragtime followed, opening on Broadway in January 1998 and running for 834 performances. Ragtime was nominated for twelve Tony Awards and won the Best Original Score, in addition to the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Lyrics. Ragtime was revived on Broadway in 2009, and was nominated for seven Tony Awards.
Seussical opened on Broadway on November 2000, and received a Grammy nomination. The musical later ran Off-Broadway in 2007, where it was nominated for the Lucille Lortel Award as Outstanding Revival and the Drama League Award as Distinguished Revival of a Musical. This is one of the most performed musicals in the US. Ahrens and Flaherty's next musicals, A Man of No Importance (2002), Dessa Rose (2005), and The Glorious Ones (2007) were produced at the Newhouse Theatre in Lincoln Center. They have frequently worked with director and choreographer Graciela Daniele.
They wrote original songs for the Chita Rivera autobiographical show, "Chita Rivera: The Dancer's Life," in 2005.
Charles Isherwood wrote of Ahrens and Flaherty: "a few composers and lyricists continue to risk irrelevance by pursuing their own lonely paths. Stephen Flaherty and Lynn Ahrens are among them. Mr. Flaherty and Ms. Ahrens, best known for their score for "Ragtime," continue to see the humanist potential in the medium. They insist on writing musicals that explore the struggles of men and women, as opposed to the synthetic creatures razzle-dazzling Broadway audiences with their preening vulgarity and self-devouring jokes." On her working relationship with Flaherty, Ahrens has commented, "Our lives have been very different . . . But our sensibilities are very similar."
Ahrens and Flaherty also collaborated on songs for the animated movie Anastasia, receiving two Academy Award and Golden Globe nominations for Best Song and Best Score. The end title song "At The Beginning" went to Number One, and the soundtrack went Gold.
Ahrens has written music and lyrics for and performed on the animated television series Schoolhouse Rock and Captain Kangaroo since 1973.
Ahrens wrote the teleplay for the 2004 television musical A Christmas Carol, starring Kelsey Grammer, Jane Krakowski and Jason Alexander.
With composer Michael Gore, she contributed two songs, "Here's Where I Stand" and "I Sing For You", to the IFC feature film, "Camp."
With Stephen Flaherty, she wrote lyrics for the title song for "After the Storm," the documentary film about young Hurricane Katrina Survivors putting on "Once On This Island."
Ahrens writes short stories which have appeared in The Kenyon Review, Calyx, Glimmer Train Stories and others. Her personal essays have appeared in Narrative Magazine and have been nominated for "Best American Essays" and the "Pushcart Anthology".
Ahrens and Flaherty gave a series of concerts of their work in Hobart, Melbourne and Sydney, Australia from September 4 to 13, 2009.
Ahrens is a lifetime member of the Council of the Dramatists Guild of America, and is a founder and co-chair of the Dramatists Guild Fellows Program for Emerging Writers.
She wrote text for the concert piece "With Voices Raised," (composer, Stephen Flaherty) which was commissioned by the Boston Pops Orchestra in 2000.
She wrote text for the concert piece "The Dream Lives On: A Portrait of the Kennedy Brothers," (composer, Peter Boyer), which was commissioned and performed by the Boston Pops in 2009, and narrated by Robert De Niro, Ed Harris, Morgan Freeman and Cherry Jones.
She was the original writer and singer of numerous jingles, including the long-running "What Would You Do For A Klondike Bar" and "Bounty, The Quicker Picker Upper."
She wrote lyrics for the choral piece, "The Song I Sing," (composer, Stephen Flaherty), commissioned by the Young People's Chorus of New York, and performed at Carnegie Hall by a chorus of 1000 children.
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