Drew Fornarola

Drew Fornarola is a playwright and songwriter from New York City. His play Straight recently concluded a critically acclaimed run off-Broadway and was designated a 2016 New York Times Critics' Pick. Fornarola has written for DreamWorks' Shrek and VeggieTales franchises, and his musical Claudio Quest won six 2015 New York Musical Festival Awards for excellence, the most of any show. Other theatre credits include Dramatic Publishing's title COLLEGE The Musical (Hippodrome State Theatre, mtvU Award), Thucydides (Winner of the Samuel French Play Festival), Vote for Me: A Musical Debate (London Theatre Workshop) and an adaptation of actress Molly Shannon's beloved children's book Tilly the Trickster (Atlantic Theatre Company). Concerts of Fornarola's songs have been presented at Lincoln Center, Feinstein's/54 Below, Broadway au Carré (Paris), London Theatre Workshop and Bar Fedora (Los Angeles), among others. In 2013, he provided string arrangements for the #1-charting Japanese hip-hop band CREAM. He is currently developing a stage musical based on the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests in Beijing. Fornarola received his bachelor's from Princeton University and his J.D. from Fordham University School of Law, and he is an alumnus of the BMI Lehman Engel Musical Theatre Workshop.