Anything you do,
Let it come from you.
Then it will be new.
Give us more to see.
“Move On” Sunday in the Park With George
Mission
The Stephen Sondheim Foundation is a 501(c)3 organization dedicated to supporting playwrights, composers and lyricists for the theatre, particularly those who are in the early stages of their careers. The foundation is committed to continuing Steve’s legacy of supporting the development of craft, collaboration and mentorship in the theatre.
Inaugural Grant Recipients
Steve took great joy in supporting and mentoring emerging playwrights, composers and lyricists throughout his career, continuing the legacy of his mentor Oscar Hammerstein II. The Foundation is committed to supporting future generations of theatre artists through annual grants to organizations that will afford them the time, space, collaboration, feedback and mental health support required to create new works that will expand the art form and “give us more to see.”
> Read the full press release here.
Playwrights’ Center of Minneapolis
Funding was provided to the Playwrights’ Center of Minneapolisto sustain and expand their Core Writer Program for a diverse group of emerging playwrights. The Core Writer Program offers artistic and professional support with a three-year term of tailored support including mentorship, play development, collaboration, workshop and a space to work.
“For over 50 years the Playwrights’ Center has been a nurturing home for playwrights. This money supports our three-year Core Writer fellowships, which help sustain playwrights and provide them with development opportunities. This cohort represents the living soul of the American theater, and it is both a great honor and a natural fit to be given resources to support them in Stephen Sondheim's name.” — Nicole A. Watson, Producing Artistic Director
Steppenwolf Theater Company
Steppenwolf Theater Company was granted funding to help re-launch the SCOUT program to commission an emerging playwright to draft a new play to be developed under the guidance of the Director of New Play Development as well as the broader artistic staff. The year long program culminates in a week long workshop culminating in a staged reading of a revised second draft of the play with director, dramaturg and the acting ensemble.
“This extraordinary support from the Sondheim Foundation will allow Steppenwolf to re-launch a program entitled SCOUT, which was paused due to the adverse impacts of the pandemic on our operating model. Steppenwolf will revive the initiative in the 2026/27 Season by commissioning an emerging playwright to draft a new work that leverages the acting style and strength of Steppenwolf ensemble members and continues the tradition of the company’s 50-year history of incubating bold, provocative plays. Through developmental workshops and public readings, SCOUT will support Steppenwolf’s work to launch new American plays by a diverse group of emerging playwrights.” — Glenn Davis and Audrey Francis, Artistic Directors, and Brooke Flanagan, Executive Director
Millay Arts
A grant was awarded for the newly created Millay Arts Artist in-Residence fellowship for a collaborative team of composers, lyricists and writers to work at their beautiful Austerlitz New York campus. The recipients receive the gift of time and space for their creative process and projects as well as multi-disciplinary artistic community to inspire and support.
“Millay Arts is honored and thrilled to be the recipient of a generous grant from the Stephen Sondheim Foundation. This contribution will be used to fund our prestigious and historic Core Residency — since 1973 we have welcomed 3000+ alumni — directly supporting gifted composers, librettists, musicians and playwrights for month-long residencies at Steepletop, the historic estate of Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Edna St.Vincent Millay. Our radical mission of providing talented, multidisciplinary artists with time and space to create remains essential and we are proud to join with the Stephen Sondheim Foundation to continue to realize this vital vision for the future.” — Monika Burczyk, PhD, Executive Director
Rhinebeck Writers Retreat
Rhinebeck Writers Retreat was awarded a grant in support of their summer Writing Residency program for musical writing teams. The program provides a sanctuary to develop musicals with a week long residency in a fully equipped private home in the Hudson valley with a support team and resources to insure the focus is solely on the creative process and craft.
"Sondheim’s legacy is alive in every writing team that we support at Rhinebeck Writers Retreat— not only in the art itself, but in his approach to collaboration. Sondheim modeled that writers need time to wrestle with character and story together. RWR exists to provide and protect that time, so the next great works can be born. It is a profound honor, and a beautiful alignment, to partner with the Sondheim Foundation in sustaining his legacy for generations of writers to come.” — Erica Rotstein, Executive Director
Annual Gift Recipient
Steve directed the board to create and help maintain, through an annual gift, the Horowitz-Sondheim Clinic at the New York Psychoanalytic Society & Institute to provide affordable mental health support to playwrights, composers and lyricists for the theatre. The Horowitz-Sondheim Clinic offers psychotherapy, psychoanalysis and psychological testing.
Horowitz-Sondheim Clinic
“Stephen Sondheim’s bequest is notable not only for the direct support it provides — allowing NYPSI to offer affordable treatment to theater artists — but also because it sends a message destigmatizing the mental health challenges that many people face. Playwrights, composers, and lyricists are not unique in benefitting from psychotherapy or psychoanalysis, but Sondheim’s incomparable stature and the visibility of the Sondheim Foundation will magnify NYPSI’s efforts to provide highly skilled therapy as part of its clinical and training activities. New York City hosts a vibrant theater community, and we encourage students as well as professionals in the groups that were specified by Stephen Sondheim to contact NYPSI through our website to seek affordable treatment.” — Dr. Tehela Nimroody, Clinical Director of the Treatment Center at the New York Psychoanalytic Society and Institute (NYPSI) and Director of the Horowitz-Sondheim Clinic
The Stephen Sondheim Foundation does not accept unsolicited grant proposals for funding.
Stephen Sondheim
Stephen Sondheim wrote the music and lyrics for SATURDAY NIGHT (1954), A FUNNY THING HAPPENED ON THE WAY TO THE FORUM (1962), ANYONE CAN WHISTLE (1964), COMPANY (1970), FOLLIES (1971), A LITTLE NIGHT MUSIC (1973), THE FROGS (1974), PACIFIC OVERTURES (1976), SWEENEY TODD (1979), MERRILY WE ROLL ALONG (1981), SUNDAY IN THE PARK WITH GEORGE (1984), INTO THE WOODS (1987), ASSASSINS (1991), PASSION (1994), ROAD SHOW (2008) and HERE WE ARE (2023), as well as the lyrics for WEST SIDE STORY (1957), GYPSY (1959), DO I HEAR A WALTZ? (1965) and additional lyrics for CANDIDE (1973). SIDE BY SIDE BY SONDHEIM (1976), MARRY ME A LITTLE (1981), YOU’RE GONNA LOVE TOMORROW (1983), PUTTING IT TOGETHER (1993/99), MOVING ON (2001) and SONDHEIM ON SONDHEIM (2010) are anthologies of his work as composer and lyricist.
For films, he composed the scores of “Stavisky” (1974), co-composed the score for “Reds” (1981) and wrote songs for “Dick Tracy” (1990). He wrote songs for the television production “Evening Primrose” (1966), co-authored the film “The Last of Sheila” (1973) and the play GETTING AWAY WITH MURDER (1996) and provided incidental music for the plays THE GIRLS OF SUMMER (1956), INVITATION TO A MARCH (1961), TWIGS (1971) and THE ENCLAVE (1973).
He won the Tony Award for Best Score for COMPANY, FOLLIES, A LITTLE NIGHT MUSIC, SWEENEY TODD, INTO THE WOODS and PASSION, all of which won the New York Drama Critics' Circle Award, as did PACIFIC OVERTURES and SUNDAY IN THE PARK WITH GEORGE, the latter also receiving the Pulitzer Prize for Drama (1985).
Stephen Sondheim was born in 1930 and raised in New York City. He graduated from Williams College, winning the Hutchinson Prize for Music Composition, after which he studied theory and composition with Milton Babbitt.
He served on the Council of the Dramatists Guild, the national association of playwrights, composers and lyricists, and served as its president from 1973 to 1981. In 1983 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters and in 1990 was appointed the first Visiting Professor of Contemporary Theatre at Oxford University. He was awarded the Kennedy Center Honors in 1993, the National Medal of Arts in 1996, the MacDowell Medal in 2013 and the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2015. His collected lyrics with attendant essays have been published in two volumes: "Finishing the Hat" (2010) and "Look, I Made a Hat" (2011). In 2010 the Broadway theater formerly known as Henry Miller's Theatre was renamed in his honor, and in 2019 he became the first living artist to have a theatre named in his honor on Shaftesbury Avenue when the refurbished Queen’s Theatre in London’s West End was renamed the Sondheim Theatre to commemorate his 90th birthday, by Sir Cameron Mackintosh.