Amanda Green

Amanda Green is an American actress, singer, songwriter, and book writer for the stage, born on December 29, 1963, in New York City, where she was raised on the Upper West Side alongside her brother Adam. Her parents were actress and singer Phyllis Newman and lyricist and playwright Adolph Green. Growing up in that household meant regular exposure to major figures of musical theatre, among them Leonard Bernstein, Jule Styne, and Cy Coleman, all of whom visited the family home. Green graduated from Brown University in Rhode Island and subsequently trained at the Circle in the Square Theatre School in New York City. She then spent two seasons at the Williamstown Theatre Festival in Williamstown, Massachusetts, before turning to songwriting and performing in Manhattan cabarets, including Joe's Pub.

In the mid-1990s, the writing of Lyle Lovett drew Green to Nashville, Tennessee, where she pursued country music. She later worked in Los Angeles, contributing lyrics to the musicals Up the Week Without a Paddle (2000) and Once Upon a Primetime (2002), the former earning her a nomination from the Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle. Back in New York, a concert of her original revue Put a Little Love in Your Mouth! was staged at Second Stage Theatre in March 2003, featuring Jessica Molaskey, Mario Cantone, and Billy Stritch, and a live recording was subsequently released on compact disc. That same year, Green wrote the lyrics for and co-starred with Nancy Opel in For the Love of Tiffany: A Wifetime Original Musical, which sold out its run at The Wings Theater during the New York International Fringe Festival in August 2003. In July 2004, Green and her mother co-hosted a concert titled Bernstein, Comden and Green: A Musical Celebration at the Venetian Theatre at the Caramoor Center for Music and the Arts in Katonah, New York, with performers including Sylvia McNair, Judy Kaye, Jason Graae, and Hugh Russell. Green is also the recipient of a 2004 Jonathan Larson Award and grant for excellence in songwriting.

Green's Broadway career took shape after she enrolled in the BMI Lehman Engel Musical Theatre Workshop, where she met composer Tom Kitt. The two collaborated on a stage adaptation of the 2000 film High Fidelity. The production played a one-month engagement at Boston's Colonial Theatre before opening on December 7, 2006, at the Imperial Theatre in New York City, where it closed after 14 performances. Green next contributed music and lyrics to Bring It On: The Musical, alongside Lin-Manuel Miranda and Tom Kitt, with a book by Jeff Whitty. The show premiered at the Alliance Theatre in Atlanta, Georgia, on January 16, 2011, before transferring to Broadway.

Green collaborated with Phish frontman Trey Anastasio on a number of songs, including "Burn That Bridge," which Anastasio performed live in May 2010. The two went on to write the music for Hands on a Hardbody, a stage adaptation of the 1997 documentary film, with lyrics by Green and a book by Doug Wright. The musical had its world premiere at the La Jolla Playhouse in San Diego, California, in April 2012, and ran on Broadway in April 2013. Green and Anastasio received a Tony Award nomination for Best Original Score for the production. In 2009, Green appeared in concert at Feinstein's at the Loews Regency in New York City alongside Jenn Colella, Ann Harada, and Norm Lewis.

Green returned to Broadway with Mr. Saturday Night, starring Billy Crystal, for which she wrote the lyrics. The show opened in 2022, and Green received both a Tony Award nomination for Best Original Score, shared with composer Jason Robert Brown, and a Drama Desk Award nomination for Outstanding Lyrics. Her Broadway credits also include the play A Saturday Night. Green has been a contributing writer to Playboy magazine.

In 2021, Green was elected president of the Dramatists Guild of America, becoming the first woman to hold that position in the organization's hundred-year history. She and her husband, Jeffrey Kaplan, an orthopedic surgeon, live in Manhattan.