Irene Sankoff is a Canadian librettist and composer–lyricist, best known for co-writing the Broadway musical Come from Away with her writing partner and husband, David Hein.^[1]

Biography

Sankoff was born in North York, Ontario, and double-majored in psychology and creative writing at York University, where she met Hein.^[2] After graduating, the couple moved to New York City in 1999 where he worked at a music studio and she studied at the Actors Studio and performed in theatres. They were in New York City during the September 11 attacks.^[2]

After spending several years studying and working in New York the couple returned to Toronto where Hein wrote a song, "My Mother's Lesbian Jewish Wiccan Wedding", about his mother and her later life partner. Sankoff and Hein expanded the song into a play that became a hit at the Toronto Fringe Festival in 2009 and then picked up by Mirvish Productions for a run at Toronto's Panasonic Theatre before touring Canada.^[3][4][5]

As a result of My Mother’s Lesbian Jewish Wiccan Wedding's success, theatre producer Michael Rubinoff approached Hein and Sankoff with his idea about a show based on Operation Yellow Ribbon in which residents of Gander, Newfoundland, housed 7,000 airline passengers who had been stranded at Gander Airport as a result of the grounding of all North American air flights following the September 11 attacks.^[6] The couple visited Gander in 2011 during the 10-year reunion of passengers and locals, and subsequently wrote Come from Away based on the stories they learned there.^[7]

Awards

Sankoff and Hein won two Drama Desk awards, one for Outstanding Musical and one for Outstanding Book of a Musical, for Come from Away in 2017.^[8] That same year, they were nominated for the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Lyrics.^[9] They were also nominated for the 2017 Tony Awards Best Book of a Musical and Best Original Score.^[10] Come From Away also won the award for Outstanding Achievement in Music at the 2019 Laurence Olivier Awards.^[11]