Composer, lyricist and playwright Joriah Kwamé is the 2026 recipient of the Stephen Schwartz Award, Dramatists Guild Foundation announced on October 8. The prize is $10,000 in unconditional support for a musical theater writer whose voice the foundation considers essential to the future of the form.
The award was created by producers Marc Platt, Nancy Rose and David Stone together with the DGF board, in honor of the composer-lyricist of Wicked and Pippin. The recipient is chosen by a private committee of composers and industry leaders.
“The life of an artist is full of peaks and valleys, and both inevitably find their way into the work. Support like this makes it possible to keep creating through all of them,” said Kwamé, himself a former DGF Fellow.
The New York City–based writer created Little Miss Perfect, a musical that grew out of his viral song of the same name and had its world premiere at Olney Theatre Center this year. With Pasek and Paul he co-wrote “Top of the World,” sung by Shawn Mendes in the Sony Pictures film Lyle, Lyle, Crocodile. He is now writing music and lyrics with Siedah Garrett for the Broadway-bound Polly: The Musical, directed and choreographed by Debbie Allen, with a book by Lena Waithe and Michael Benjamin Washington. He also wrote the music and lyrics for DreamWorks’ Trolls JR., licensed through Music Theatre International.
Kwamé was a 2022–23 DGF Fellow for Musical Theatre and won a 2024 Jonathan Larson Grant, and Goodspeed Musicals and Chicago Shakespeare Theater have both commissioned and developed his work.
He joins a list that began when the award debuted in 2019: Oliver Houser (2019), Khiyon Hursey (2020), Emily Gardner Xu Hall (2021), Heather Christian (2022), Benjamin Velez (2023), Daniel Lazour (2024) and Madeline Myers (2025).
His work will be showcased at DGF’s annual Gala on October 19, 2026, at Ziegfeld Ballroom (141 W. 54th St.), with a performance of “Leave the Rest to Me” from Sinister, which has music and lyrics by Kwamé and a book by Lauren Gunderson. This year’s Gala honors Sue Frost, Branden Jacobs-Jenkins and R. Patrick Morrow.
