Benjamin Velez and Madeline Myers Receive the 2025 Kleban Prize for Musical Theatre

The Kleban Foundation announced the recipients of the 35th annual Kleban Prize for Musical Theatre. Benjamin Velez received the 2025 Kleban Prize for the most promising musical theater lyricist and Madeline Myers was awarded the 2025 Kleban Prize for the most promising musical theater librettist.

The prizes will be presented in an invitation-only ceremony hosted by ASCAP and BMI at ASCAP on Monday, February 3. The event will be hosted by Tony Award winners and Kleban board members Richard Maltby Jr. and Maury Yeston and will feature performances from work by this year’s prize recipients.

On this year’s judging panel were choreographer Raja Feather Kelly (We’re Gonna Die, A Strange Loop), Tony Award-winning designer Clint Ramos (Eclipsed, Slave Play), and Tony Award-winning producer Rachel Sussman (Suffs, Just for Us).

The Kleban Foundation was established in 1988 under the will of Edward L. Kleban, the Tony- and Pulitzer Prize-winning lyricist of the musical A Chorus Line. Previous winners include Michael John LaChiusa, Jason Robert Brown, Shaina Taub, and more.

Benjamin Velez is a composer and lyricist born and raised in Miami, Florida, whose musicals include Borderline, which opened the 2019 Musical Theater Conference at the O’Neill, and Kiss My Aztec, written with John Leguizamo, Tony Taccone, and David Kamp. His next musical, Real Women Have Curves, a collaboration with Joy Huerta (of Jesse Y Joy), Lisa Loomer, and Nell Benjamin, directed by Sergio Trujillo, will be opening on Broadway this April at the James Earl Jones Theater.

Madeline Myers is a musical theater composer and lyricist whose musicals include Double Helix (world premiere Bay Street Theater, 2023), Flatbush Avenue (UNC-Greensboro commission, 2021), and The Devil’s Apprentice (world premiere Copenhagen, Denmark, 2018).

The application for the 2026 Kleban Prize will open on March 17 and close on May 15.