Tom Kirdahy

Thomas Joseph Kirdahy (born June 18, 1963) is an American Tony and Olivier Award-winning theatrical producer, lawyer, and activist.

Kirdahy is currently producing the New York Times Critic’s Pick Here We Are, the final musical from Stephen Sondheim.

Here We Are was written by Sondheim with a book by David Ives and direction by Joe Mantello.

Described by the New York Times as “hands down, the most anticipated event of the fall season,” the production opened at The Shed in Hudson Yards on October 22, 2023, and was immediately heralded as “cool and impossibly chic” by Jesse Green in his New York Times review.

Also in 2023, Kirdahy produced the nine-time Tony Award-nominated original Broadway musical New York, New York—with a score by John Kander and Fred Ebb, additional lyrics by Lin-Manuel Miranda, and direction and choreography by Susan Stroman—which won the Tony Award for Best Scenic Design.

He also produced the Broadway play Grey House by Levi Holloway, a new psychological thriller directed by Joe Mantello and starring Laurie Metcalf, Tatiana Maslany, and Paul Sparks, which broke new ground for the underrepresented psychological thriller/horror genre on Broadway.

His other recent credits include the Tony-nominated 2022 Broadway revival of August Wilson’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play The Piano Lesson, starring Samuel L. Jackson, John David Washington, and Danielle Brooks, which became the highest-grossing August Wilson play in Broadway history; the Broadway production of the epic two-part play The Inheritance, winner of four Tony Awards including Best Play; the musical Hadestown, winner of eight Tony Awards including Best Musical; the off-Broadway revival of Little Shop of Horrors starring Tammy Blanchard, Jonathan Groff, and Christian Borle, which won the Drama Desk, Drama League and Outer Critics Circle Awards for Best Revival of a Musical; and the 2019 revival of Terrence McNally’s Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune starring Audra McDonald and Michael Shannon, which received two Tony Award nominations including Best Revival of a Play.

Kirdahy was born in Hauppauge, New York, in 1963 and is the son of Paul E. Kirdahy and Joan Kirdahy (née McGunnigle).

Two-time Tony Award-winner Donna Murphy grew up across the street from him.

He attended New York University and graduated as valedictorian of his class in 1985 with a BA in politics and dramatic literature.

"He served as a student senator and one of the first openly gay chairs of the University Committee on Student Life (UCSL) and the Student Senators Council (SSC)."

He then went on to NYU School of Law in the hopes of being an entertainment lawyer.

The advent of the AIDS crisis steered him towards dedicating his early professional career to fighting for LGBT causes and providing free legal services for people with HIV/AIDS.

Kirdahy said, "At the time the AIDS crisis was getting worse. A great number of my friends were getting sick and dying. I felt that I needed to do something about the crisis that was decimating my community."

He developed HIV projects at Gay Men's Health Crisis, Bronx AIDS services, and Nassau-Suffolk Law Services.

For many years, he was highly active at the Manhattan Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Community Center, from its early days when ACT UP was forming to when he became a part of the Executive Board where he played a critical role in expanding its cultural programs.

He was the co-Chair of the East End Gay Organization which would eventually lead him to meet his future husband, playwright, Terrence McNally, as well as LGBT figures like Edith Windsor, the plaintiff in the landmark Supreme Court case that led to the legalization of same-sex marriage.

Kirdahy always maintained a strong passion and love for the theatre, even while pursuing a career as an activist and lawyer.

Through the East End Gay Organization, Kirdahy and critic, Isa Goldberg, organized a discussion called "Theatre From a Gay Perspective", which was the beginning of his transition to a producing career.

The panel included three playwrights: Lanford Wilson, Edward Albee, and Terrence McNally.

In 2007 he produced Deuce by Terrence McNally on Broadway starring Marian Seldes and Angela Lansbury.

It was Lansbury's return to Broadway after more than twenty years.

Kirdahy went on to produce the Tony-nominated revival of Ragtime (2009) and the revival of Master Class in the West End starring Tyne Daly (2011).

His other notable Broadway credits include the musical Anastasia, the 2014 revival of It's Only a Play starring Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick, and The Visit starring Chita Rivera, which received five Tony Award nominations.

He has received additional Tony nominations for Broadway productions of Mothers and Sons, After Midnight, Ragtime, and Master Class. His West End credits include the West End production of The Inheritance, which won four Olivier Awards including Best New Play, and Edward Albee's The Goat, or Who Is Sylvia?.

Off-Broadway, Kirdahy has produced The White Chip, The Jungle, and White Rabbit Red Rabbit, among other shows.

He serves on The Broadway League Board of Governors, the Board of Trustees of Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS, and the Advisory Council for the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin, and is a founding director of Berwin Lee London New York Playwrights, Inc. He was named the Broadway Global Producer of the Year in 2014, and received the Commercial Theater Institute's Robert Whitehead Award for Outstanding Achievement in Commercial Theater Producing in 2019.

In 2014, he produced Terrence McNally's play Mothers and Sons starring Tyne Daly, which was McNally's 20th Broadway production.

The New York Times described the Tony nominated play as "an ambitious attempt to dramatize the head-spinning changes in Gay America", and "a resonant elegy for a ravaged generation".

It marked the first time a legally wed gay couple was seen on a Broadway stage.

In 2014, Kirdahy would go on to produce It's Only a Play, a satire of an opening night on Broadway.

The cast included Nathan Lane, Matthew Broderick, Megan Mullally, Rupert Grint, Stockard Channing, F. Murray Abraham, and Micah Stock.

It was directed by three-time Tony Award winner Jack O'Brien.

The production broke box office records at the Gerald Schoenfeld Theatre where it was initially scheduled for an 18-week run.

It's Only a Play transferred to the Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre and was extended to June 7, 2015.

The production would subsequently star actors Martin Short, Katie Finneran, Maulik Pancholy, and T. R. Knight.

Kirdahy followed up It's Only a Play with a production of The Visit, a musical with a book by Terrence McNally, music by John Kander, and lyrics by Fred Ebb.

The musical was fifteen years in the making, but the production seen on Broadway was the result of a new team assembled by Kirdahy, which included Chita Rivera, Roger Rees, and directed by John Doyle, who Kirdahy stopped on an airplane in order to get the script read by him.

The musical went on to earn five Tony nominations.

In 2020, Tom was the recipient of the Miss Lilly Award, a prize in recognition of his advocacy for women in a male-dominated industry.