SOPHIE BOYCE
Lyricist / Librettist
ABOUT ME
I am an NYC-based Lyricist and Librettist, born and raised in England. I spent my childhood forcing innocent bystanders to star in my feature films... the obnoxiousness of which is best chronicled here.
I like to write rhythmic, breakneck-paced stories that surprise and thrill. I like to write trouble-makers, obsessives and/or women who refuse to shrink. I like the audacious, the facetious and the morally ambiguous.
Recent honours include:
Fred Ebb Award Winner 2025
Richard Rodgers Award Winner 2025
Dramatist Guild Fellow 2025
Eric H. Weinberger Librettist Award Winner 2025
Kleban Prize Finalist 2023
Some other things: I was a member of the Writers Room for the BAFTA-Award-Winning TV series 'Skins', I am the Founder/Director of Spirit YPC, which under my direction has attracted over 150 Million online viewers to our MT performances. I am alum of the BMI Bookwriting Workshop, Professor of Playwriting at the Norwalk Conservatory, and I have an MFA in Musical Theatre Writing from NYU Tisch.
And I still harbour dreams of playing Orphan Annie, ideally in a version that's exclusively lip-synced. I fancy myself an employable-level lip-syncer.
Read about my PROJECTS IN DEVELOPMENT, or LISTEN TO SONGS.
Projects in Development
The Dark Lady
With Veronica Mansour
Winner of the 2025 Richard Rodgers Award.
The year is 1588 and Emilia Bassano is crafting the most remarkable stories that the world will ever see.
But women are not permitted to write plays. And so theatre's greatest characters stand to be lost in the abyss.
Until a deal is struck, with the stableboy William Shakespeare...
The Forty Elephants
With Einar Adalsteinsson
Inspired by true events, this is the story of London's notorious all-woman crime-ring: The Forty Elephants. It's a show that celebrates women's rights... but even more so, women's wrongs.
Developed at The Other Palace Musical Bites, Winchester University, Edge Hill University, NYU Tisch.
Little Red
With Veronica Mansour
The tale of a troubled teen training under the enigmatic “Granny” to become the ultimate Wolf-Killer. Flipping the script on the original fairytale, this is a dance-driven, horror-tinged musical with a score that fuses folk, pop and opera. A thrilling journey of discovery that explores the mechanics of fear and polarisation, and asks whether light can be found in the darkness of the woods.
Everything's Going My Way
A play
Colin is a psychotherapist assigned to work with the corrosive 17-year-old Noah and his worn-down mother, Helen.
As an unnerving paternal instinct takes hold, power ping-pongs between them and the line between care and harm all but disappears.
This is a play that examines masculine intimacy, the ferocity of motherhood, and connection in its most fragile and complicated forms.
Unglamorous
With Fred Feeney
A true story. In 2020, the world was shut down. But while life slowed, Ruth Miller was just getting started. She had a dream: to put guitars into the hands of the women of Leicester. One by one, women from all walks of life started to trickle through the door of this rinky-dink practice room that had previously felt off-limits to them. Most of them were in their 60s; grandmothers, women used to getting along quietly. Now, they were about to make noise.