Your Arms Too Short to Box With God – Broadway's Best Shows

Broadway’s Best Women Composers & Lyricists

In the world of Broadway, where melodies and lyrics transport audiences to new realms of emotion, the spotlight has long shone on remarkable talents responsible for crafting the songs that define our favorite musicals. While the overwhelming majority of composers and lyricists are men, a roster of brilliant women has long been making waves, breaking barriers, and leaving an indelible mark on the Main Stem. Here, we celebrate Broadway’s Best Women Composers & Lyricists, highlighting the small but mighty group of women who composed for the stage in the 20th century.

Mary Rodgers

Rodgers is perhaps best known for the 1959 musical Once Upon a Mattress. Later writing credits included 1978’s Working. Her sardonic memoirs were published posthumously in 2022 with the help of her friend, New York Times critic Jesse Green, and they detail, with her signature sense of humor, how she found it nearly impossible to be both a composer and a parent, eventually transitioning into writing children’s books, such as the original Freaky Friday. Mattress will receive a production in January 2023 at City Center Encores!, starring Sutton Foster and Michael Urie, and directed by Lear DeBesonnet (Into the Woods).

Sarah Jessica Parker performs “Shy” from Mattress

Carol Hall

Carol Hall was one of the first composers to introduce country western styles to Broadway audiences, with her score for 1978’s The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas. The musical was turned into a film starring Dolly Parton, and it turned Hall’s song “Hard Candy Christmas” into a holiday season standard. Her body of work is not entirely “adult” material – Hall contributed music to the landmark 1972 children’s album Free to Be You and Me, along with Mary Rodgers, and wrote songs for the early seasons of Sesame Street.

The original Broadway cast performs “Hard Candy Christmas”

Micki Grant

Micki Grant first rose to prominence as an actor, appearing in the Langston Hughes Broadway shows Tambourines to Glory and Jericho-Jim Crow in the 1960s. In 1972, she was the first woman, and the first African-American, to write both the music and lyrics for a musical, for Don’t Bother Me, I Can’t Cope. She became a 3-time Tony nominee that season, as well as receiving an OBIE award. Grant, like Rodgers, later contributed songs to 1978’s Working, and also contributed writing to Your Arms Too Short to Box With God and Eubie.

“If I Could’ve Been”, the act 1 finale of Working, contributed by Grant:

The entirety of the Don’t Bother Me, I Can’t Cope LP is on YouTube:

Lucy Simon

Lucy Simon began her songwriting career with her sister, Carly Simon. After contributing songs to the Off-Broadway revue A…My Name Is Alice, she composed the music for 1991’s The Secret Garden, for which she was nominated for a Tony. Garden was the first musical to have an all-female writing and directing team.

“Lily’s Eyes” from The Secret Garden

Elizabeth Swados

Elizabeth “Liz” Swados won an OBIE award and was nominated for 5 Tonys for her 1978 musical Runaways. Originating at the Public Theater, the unconventional revue told the stories of homeless youth in New York City who had run away from home. Swados also directed and choreographed the production. After the success of Runaways, Swados contributed the music to the Broadway musical Doonesbury, and later became an off-Broadway stalwart. She influenced generations of theater artists as a professor at NYU.

“I Can Have It All” from Doonesbury

The Encores! Off-Center revival of Runaways.

A soon-to-be member of this list is Shaina Taub, a celebrated composer-lyricist set to make her Broadway debut as both writer (and star?) of Suffs. The new musical is due to open at the Music Box Theatre in April 2024 after Purlie Victorious’s limited engagement ends in February.

The world premiere of Suffs at the Public Theater

Broadway’s Best Directors Who Started As Actors

By Katie Devin Orenstein

Which Broadway directors gave onstage performances before leaping to the other side of the table? Find out below!

George Abbott

The larger-than-life Abbott, who lived until he was 107, directed over 50 Broadway shows, including the original productions of Pal Joey, On the Town, The Pajama Game, Once Upon a Mattress, and A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum. He made his Broadway debut as an actor in The Misleading Lady all the way back in 1913.

Michael Arden

This year’s Tony winner for Best Direction of a Musical for Parade, Arden made his Broadway debut as an actor in the 2003 revival of Big River, and also performed in Twyla Tharp’s The Times They Are A-Changin’.

Vinnette Justine Carroll

Vinnette Carroll became the first Black woman to be nominated for a directing Tony in 1973, for Micki Grant’s Don’t Bother Me, I Can’t Cope. She was nominated for both directing and writing the book of Your Arms Too Short to Box With God in 1976. Her numerous acting credits include the 1961 revival of The Octoroon.

Gower Champion

Champion was the original director and choreographer of hits like Bye Bye Birdie, Hello, Dolly!, and 42nd Street. He got his start as a dancer in 1940s revues like The Streets of Paris.

David Cromer

In between directing The House of Blue Leaves and The Band’s Visit on Broadway, Cromer found time to play racist Homeowner’s Association member Karl Lindner in Kenny Leon’s revival of A Raisin in the Sun, as well as appear opposite Jeff Daniels in the pilot of HBO’s The Newsroom. He is also currently starring in an off-Broadway production of Uncle Vanya.

Graciela Daniele

Graciela Daniele started her career as a dancer for legends like Bob Fosse and Michael Bennett – she was in the original company of Follies, and was the original Hunyak, a.k.a. Uh-Uh in “Cell Block Tango,” in Chicago. She’s since choreographed 9 Broadway shows, and directed and choreographed another 6, including Once on this Island. She is the only Latina nominee in history for Best Choreography and Best Direction of a Musical at the Tonys, and she won a Lifetime Achievement Tony in 2020.

Graciela Daniele’s Tony-nominated choreography:

Bob Fosse

Before he was the legendary director-choreographer of Pippin, Chicago, The Pajama Game, Sweet Charity, and the director of movies like Cabaret and All That Jazz, he made his Broadway debut as a dancer in the forgotten 1950 revue Dance Me a Song. He understudied the role of Joey in the 1953 Pal Joey revival that turned it into a hit, and played the role at City Center in between choreography jobs in 1963.

Maria Friedman

Friedman will direct this fall’s upcoming revival of Merrily We Roll Along. She is a celebrated Sondheim interpreter, and earned Olivier awards for her performances as Fosca in Sondheim’s Passion, as well as Mother in Ahrens and Flaherty’s Ragtime.

Tony Goldwyn

Tony Goldwyn is co-directing the upcoming Pal Joey rework at City Center, but he’s best known to television audiences as Scandal’s President Fitz, and he’s also going to appear this summer in Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer.

Kenny Leon

While Kenny Leon was the artistic director of Atlanta’s Alliance theater in the 1990s, he also found time to act in a number of TV shows– including The Rosa Parks Story, starring Angela Bassett. He won his Tony for directing A Raisin in the Sun in 2014, and is next represented on Broadway with Purlie Victorious, opening this fall.

Patrick Marber

Marber actually began his career in British sketch comedy. He then began writing for the English stage, and wrote and directed Closer, which transferred to Broadway in 1999 and was turned into a film directed by Mike Nichols in 2004. He is now known best for his work directing Tom Stoppard plays, including 2017’s Travesties and this season’s Leopoldstadt, for which he won his first Tony award.

Jerry Mitchell

Jerry Mitchell started dancing on Broadway as a replacement in A Chorus Line. He worked his way up to being Jerome Robbins’ assistant on Jerome Robbins’ Broadway, and choreographed You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown in 1999. His first time directing on Broadway was the beloved Legally Blonde.

Casey Nicholaw

Nicholaw, who won a Tony this year for choreographing Some Like It Hot, was an ensemble member in 8 Broadway shows, including dancing Susan Stroman’s choreography in Crazy For You, and understudying Horton the Elephant in the original Seussical. Those performance chops came in handy this March, when Nicholaw went on as an emergency understudy in Some Like It Hot.

Nicholaw in the ensemble of *Seussical* (far right).

Jerome Robbins

Robbins, the legend at the helm of West Side Story, Fiddler on the Roof, and Gypsy, was born Jerome Rabinowitz, and began his career as a dancer in the 1920s in Yiddish modern dance companies. He was also a soloist with American Ballet Theatre in the early 1940s, and danced in George Balanchine’s Broadway revues. He choreographed Fancy Free for ABT, which he and Leonard Bernstein then transformed into his first Broadway choreography credit, On The Town.

Ruben Santiago-Hudson

Santiago-Hudson was Tony nominated for his direction of August Wilson’s Jitney, and has acted in three other Wilson plays on Broadway. He also wrote, directed, and starred in his one man show Lackawanna Blues.

Jessica Stone

Stone made her Broadway directing debut this year with Kimberly Akimbo, but her many credits as a performer include Frenchy in the 1994 Grease revival and replacing Sarah Jessica Parker as Rosemary in the 1996 revival of How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying. Her next project is directing the Broadway-bound Water for Elephants, which just premiered at the Alliance Theatre in Atlanta.

Susan Stroman

Five-time Tony winner Susan Stroman, represented on Broadway this year with New York, New York, made her debut as a dancer in the country Western musical Whoopee! in 1979.

Schele Williams

Schele Williams, who will direct the upcoming revivals of The Wiz and Aida, was an ensemble member in the original production of Aida in 2001.

Williams understudied the title role in Aida – here she is singing “Easy as Life” from that show:

Jerry Zaks

Jerry Zaks is a four-time Tony winning director, including for his Broadway directing debut, The House of Blue Leaves. He’s also known for lavish revivals like Hello, Dolly! and The Music Man. His Broadway resumé goes back quite far – he originated the role of Kenickie in Grease.