IT’S NOT A PLAY ON WORDS. IT’S A MUSICAL.

In this Tony Award®-winning run on Broadway, The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee is about a group of awkward, middle schoolers and the heat of competition. Their emotions may be running from A to Z ,but they step up to the mic anyway because they love spelling, and because being a champion could solve everything for them.

With music and lyrics by Tony Award® winner William Finn, a book by Tony Award® winner Rachel Sheinkin, and new direction and choreography by Danny Mefford, Spelling Bee is about the little wins that carry us through life’s many awkward spells.

(Source: https://spellingbeenyc.com/)

MUSIC & LYRICS by WILLIAM FINN

William Finn was the writer and composer of Falsettos, for which he received two Tony Awards, Best Book of a Musical (with James Lapine) and Best Original Score. He also wrote and composed In Trousers, March of the Falsettos and Falsettoland (Outer Critics Circle Award for Best Musical, two Los Angeles Drama Critic's Awards, two Drama Desk Awards, the Lucille Lortel Award, and Guggenheim Fellowship in Musical Composition). A graduate of Williams College where he was awarded the Hutchinson Fellowship for Musical Composition, Finn taught a weekly master class at the NYU Tisch Graduate Program in Musical Theatre Writing. Other projects include Elegies, A Song Cycle (Lincoln Center) and The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee which ran on Broadway and has been produced nationally and internationally, as well.

Mr. Finn passed away on April 7th, 2025.

BOOK by RACHEL SHEINKIN

Rachel Sheinkin was the writer of the book, or story and dialogue, for The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee in which she wont a Tony, Drama Desk awards. Since then, Sheinkin has residencies, fellowships, and commissions with groups such as the Eugene O'Neill National Theater Center, Baryshnikov Dance Foundation, Playwrights Horizons, and more. Sheinkin is a volunteer mentor for TDF's Open Doors program, a visiting instructor at Yale School of Drama, and adjunct faculty member of NYU's Graduate Musical Theater Writing Program.