Main content
Playwriting and Screenwriting

Sara Cooper, PWSW adjunct faculty

The American Academy of Arts and Letters Winner 2022

“The American Academy of Arts and Letters have announced the 2022 winners of the Richard Rodgers Award for Musical Theater. Both Driving in Circles by Jay Eddy and Perpetual Sunshine & The Ghost Girls by Sara Cooper and Lynne Shankel have received Staged Reading awards.

The Richard Rodgers Awards were created and endowed by trailblazing Broadway composer Richard Rodgers in 1978 to foster new development in the musical theatre.”

Sara Cooper has been teaching in the Playwriting and Screenwriting program at Purchase for several years with the classes Bookwriting: Story Structure in the Musical Theater, Songwriting for the Musical and Playwriting I.  Sara also mentors a musical senior project.

Sara is a Playwright-Lyricist. Recent highlights: Perpetual Sunshine & the Ghost Girls, Richard Rodgers Award (2022); NYTB Choreography Lab (2022), Rhinebeck Writers Retreat (2021), NYTB New Works Series (2021), 5X15, Beck Center/Baldwin Wallace (2021), NAMT 15-Minute Challenge winner (2020); The ASCAP Foundation Lucille and Jack Yellen Award (2021); Commercial musical adaptation of a major motion picture, lyricist (TBA); HoT, Festival of New Musicals, Goodspeed Musicals (2022), Johnny Mercer Foundation Writers Grove, Goodspeed Musicals (2020), New York Theatre Barn New Works Series (2020), concert, Dixon Place (2019); The Memory Show, LAMB Theatre (2022), Benefit Reading, Alzheimer’s Association, The Mercury Theater Chicago (2019), New Bard, London (2016), Transport Group, The Duke on 42nd Street (2013), Water Gate Media, Seoul (2012-2013), Barrington Stage Company (2010), NAMT (2010); Barrington Stage Company Spark Grant (2020); Windows and Breakfast, Lowbrow Opera Collective (2021, 2020); Polyanna, Grand Jury Prize, Barnstorm Media (2020); Elevator Heart, Moxie Arts (2019), USF (2018), Tisch New Musicals (2016); Fault Lines, The Kennedy Center (2018), American Opera Initiative Fellowship (2017); Things I Left On Long Island, FringeNYC (2014), Overall Excellence Award: Playwriting (2014), Time Out NY Critics’ Pick (2014); Jonathan Larson Grant, American Theatre Wing (2014). MFA Graduate Musical Theatre Writing, Tisch NYU. Dramatists Guild, ASCAP. http://saracooper.me