Stuart Ostrow

Distinguished Professor of Musical Theatre

Stuart Ostrow was Frank Loesser's apprentice and became the Vice President and General Manager of Frank Music Corp., and Frank Productions, Inc., the Broadway co-producers of: The Most Happy Fella, The Music Man, Greenwillow, and How To Succeed In Business With Really Trying.  

As a solo producer, his many original award-winning Broadway and West End productions include: M. Butterfly, which won the Tony Award for Best Play, Pippin, and 1776, which received both the New York and London Drama Critics Awards as well as the Tony Award for Best Musical. He also produced The Apple Tree, produced and directed Here's Love, was the associate director of Chicago, and the author of Stages, on Broadway. 

Mr. Ostrow established the Stuart Ostrow Foundation's Musical Theatre Lab in 1973; a non-profit, professional workshop for original musical theatre, the first of its kind. Since its inception the MTLab has presented 32 experimental new works, including The Robber Bridegroom by Alfred Uhry and Robert Waldman, Really Rosie by Maurice Sendak and Carole King, Up From Paradise, by Arthur Miller and Stanley Silverman, and Medea by Robert Wilson.  

Stuart Ostrow is a trained musician, choral conductor-arranger, and clarinetist. He has served on the Board of Governors of The League of New York Theatres, the Advisory Committee of The New York Public Library, and the Board of Directors of the American National Theatre and Academy. He has also served on The Overseer's Committee to visit Harvard's Loeb Drama Center and was a founding panel member of the Opera-Musical Theatre Program of the National Endowment for the Arts. 

Additionally, Mr. Ostrow produced the original Broadway production of La Bête, which won the Olivier Award for Best Comedy, and he was honored as Producer of the Year, by the National Alliance for Musical Theatre. He holds the Hugh Roy and Lillie Cranz Cullen University Professorship at the University of Houston and is the author of A Producer's Broadway Journey, Thank You Very Much (The Little Guide To Auditioning For The Musical Theatre), and Present At The Creation, Leaping In The Dark and Going Against The Grain: 1776, Pippin, M. Butterfly, La Bête & Other Broadway Adventures, which was voted one of the Top Ten Arts Books 2006 by Booklist. Mr. Ostrow has served as a member of the Pulitzer Prize Drama Jury and is the Chairman of the Board of Trustees for the Institute for Advanced Study in Musical Theatre. The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts Billy Rose Theatre Collection has recently acquired his archive.