A guest post from Daryl Lisa Fazio, lyricist and librettist of this year’s show lift, written with Aaron McAllister.
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INSIDE THE 2015 FESTIVAL: The Right Forty-Five
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Video Series: Measure What Matters
Our friends at TRG Arts have launched a video series called Measure What Matters: 6 Metrics Arts Leaders Should Track. Every Tuesday from now through October 20, they’ll be posting a brief video explaining different ways your organization can use data you probably already have “to assess [your] current situation, stabilize [your] business model, and start generating working capital.”
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2015 Festival Update
Do you want to know more about the shows in the 27th Annual Festival of New Musicals? See the Five Things each show’s writing team wants you to know before you come to the Festival!
Five Things You Should Know About Costs of Living
1. Costs of Living was inspired by, though not based upon, a 2009 New York Times article by Corey Kilgannon called Night and Day about two immigrant cab drivers whose partnership began with promise and ended in tragedy. Mr. Kilgannon liked it so much he wrote a follow-up article about the musical itself.
2. Costs of Living is very much a musical that behaves like a play. In fact, Playwright David Henry Hwang recommended it to the American Playwriting Foundation’s Relentless Award (the Philip Seymour Hoffman one), despite a very clear guideline barring musicals of any kind.
3. You might not think it from the description, but parts of Costs of Living are kind of hilarious.
4. With the proliferation of Asian-American stories in the mainstream, Costs of Living represents the next step in that evolutionary chain: a “Third Generation” story that isn’t about acclimation or immigration, but the impact of those things on the American tapestry.
5. Costs of Living has been in development for a few years with many readings and workshops. We are looking for a staged workshop and/or production of the show, and are also open to seeking involvement from commercial producers. Our hope is to get the show out there to as wide an audience as possible wherever possible.
Five Things You Should Know About Imagine Harry
1. Imagine Harry is about Tucker and Harry. It’s about that moment in your life when you reconcile your need to be an adult with your desire to remain a child, and the musical comes at that moment through two lenses: a 25 year-old who can’t seem to leave home and a 35 year-old who isn’t sure he’s ready to be a father.
2. Imagine Harry can be done at any scale. Because the musical deals with imagination, it was written to sustain both a small theatre-out-of-a-trunk approach as well as an all-the-bells-and-whistles-and-possibly-laser-beams approach. We want it to be a director’s playground, and are eager to take the first steps with a director and producer/theatre to explore ALL the possibilities for this magical world.
3. Imagine Harry is a musical for grown-ups. Although it has childhood as a central theme, the ultimate destination is an exploration of how to become a grown-up and deal with your aging parents, your fears about becoming a parent yourself and your place in the often overwhelming adult world. Think of it as a grown-up movie with a PG-13 rating, and you’ve got the target audience.
4. Imagine Harry has the beat of a pop song. This musical was written by two guys who love pop music. And musical theatre. So if Ben Folds, Taylor Swift and A Great Big World had a jam session with Kander & Ebb, Ahrens & Flaherty and Jason Robert Brown, this score might have come from that session.
5. Imagine Harry has a big heart. We are two guys who wear our hearts pretty much not only on our sleeves but with a neon sign pointing directly to them. And we wanted to write a show that reflected that sensibility. We don’t mind tears. And we don’t mind laughing at the same time. So we wrote a show that let us do both. And hopefully, you, too.
A guest post from Rebekah Greer Melocik, lyricist for this year’s show The Last Queen of Canaan, written with Jacob Yandura and Harrison David Rivers. In April,The Last Queen of Canaan was awarded a NFNM Writer’s Residency Grant at Theater Latté Da.
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INSIDE THE 2015 FESTIVAL: Why We Applied to the Festival
A guest post from Kyle Jarrow, book writer and co-lyricist for this year’s show Noir, written with Duncan Sheik. Kyle was previously part of the NAMT Festival in 2009 with his show Hostage Song written with Clay McLeod Chapman.
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New Work In Progress: Creep
This month, we chat with Terry Martin from WaterTower Theatre (WTT) in Addison, TX about their upcoming premiere of the new musical, Creep.
Creep is an original musical with book, music and lyrics by local writer/actor Donald Fowler. It is a musical mystery/thriller set during the time of the mythic Jack the Ripper murders. While completely fictional, the story line weaves in some of the factual things known about the famous murders. The narrative follows a mother, her beautiful young daughter and the mysterious man who suddenly comes into their lives. When savage and puzzling murders begin to take place in and around the Whitehall section of London, anyone and everyone seems capable of murder. With a cast of 18 and an orchestra of 10, the show will be one of the largest WTT had produced in its history.
How did Creep find its way to WaterTower?
The writer Donald Fowler, has been well known to WTT audiences as an actor on our stages almost since our beginning. In 2010, the first draft of the show was presented as a reading at our annual Out of the Loop Fringe Festival. I directed that reading, and it was well-received and generated quite a bit of buzz locally. Based on feedback from that reading, the writer continued to work on Creepand Uptown Players (another local company) did a full staged workshop in 2013. I saw that workshop and began talks with Mr. Fowler about a full realized production at WTT. In order to take it to the next level, in November 2014, I hired Kate Galvin to direct the production and to work with Fowler on refining and reshaping some key elements. Kate has great experience with new musical development and her insight and guidance has been invaluable over the last few months as we move toward the opening of Creep.
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Festival Show Update: Bernice Bobs Her Hair
This month, we check in with Adam Gwon and Julia Jordan as they prepare their 2011 Festival Show Bernice Bobs Her Hair for its premiere production at Lyric Theatre of Oklahoma this Fall.
In this new delightful dancing musical, small town socially awkward Bernice visits her popular cousin in the big city and finds herself making changes to fit in with her cousin and the popular crowd. Testing the limits of society, free-spirited Bernice bobs her hair, becoming a social revolutionary in the roaring 20’s.
It has been four years since we presented Bernice Bobs Her Hair in the Festival, but do you remember what the reception for the show was like at the Festival?
We remember a great reception, and how much Kate Wetherhead made everyone laugh! We got several offers immediately after the festival, and for a variety of reasons we can’t even remember, none of them worked out at the time. A lot of colleges were interested, but we felt strongly that we wanted to solidify the show with a professional production before releasing it out into the world. So we waited patiently for the right opportunity to come along.
Both of you have been quite busy with other projects over the past few years. What work have you done on Bernice?
When we found out that Lyric Theatre would be doing the premiere, it’d been awhile since we’d revisited the script, and at almost the exact same moment, we got an email from Bruce Goodrich at CSU Fullerton, who’d seen the show at NAMT and was checking in to see if Bernice had become available. It was perfect timing, so we did a reading with them and identified all the rewrites we wanted to do before going into rehearsal for the production. We also have a new 11 o’clock number for Bernice, which we wrote in two airport hotel bars after getting stuck on our way home from auditions in Oklahoma City!
In June, we chatted with Kevin Moore, Producing Artistic Director of The Human Race Theatre Co. in Dayton, Ohio about their upcoming Festival of New Works (August 7 & 8) and how it has changed over the years.
The Human Race Theatre Company’s commitment to the creation of new plays and musicals takes center stage this summer with its Festival of New Works. We’ve selected 5 works in development—3 plays and 2 musicals—to present as staged and table readings for this exciting summer event. The productions perform in our 60-seat Caryl D. Philips Creativity Center and at The Loft Theatre over the course of the two-day festival, the culmination of a two-week-long workshop process in which writers have the chance to further develop their scripts with the help of professional directors and actors, then see them performed on stage.
The Human Race Theatre Co. has been developing new musicals for years. How did the Festival of New Works come about and how does it fit in to your mission?
We started in 2000 with three workshops scattered throughout our season- plugging them in wherever we had time. And we did that for 7 years. But it became increasingly difficult overlapping with our regular productions. So we shifted to a summer Festival because we traditionally did not produce in the summer and we now would have no competition for our housing, rehearsal space, actors and stage. And it allowed us to stay engaged with our audience during the summer months. Our mission always included nurturing writers and developing new works, which now includes plays as well as musicals. This summer’s Festival combines both plays and musicals for the first time.
What does the Festival provide for the writers in residence as they work on their show?
This summer’s Festival expands our format and allows us to work at various levels. For example, there will be a full workshop of the new musical Mann…and Wife by Douglas J. Cohen and Dan Elish. Our contract allows for 40 hours of rehearsal over two weeks and a public staged reading. This really gives the writers a chance to hear their work while they continue to make changes. We have two new formats this summer:
1) A public table reading of a new play – 11 hours of rehearsal.
2) A format I call a “Snapshot.” This is a 20-30 minute presentation that introduces our audience to new works and includes scenes, songs and discussions with the writers. Each work also has an 11-hour rehearsal contract. This summer, two plays and one musical will be presented as one event for our audience.
Do you present shows at any stage on their trajectory or do you have a preference for when you present them?
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Announcing the 27th Annual Festival of New Musicals Shows
We’re thrilled to announce the line up of new musicals for the 27th Annual Festival of New Musicals, which will take place on Thursday, October 15 and Friday, October 16 at in New York.
Now in its 27th year, the National Alliance for Musical Theatre’s Festival of New Musicals attracts theatre producers from around the world for this industry-only event to discover eight new musicals presented in 45-minute reading presentations over two days. All production costs are underwritten by NAMT, at no cost to the writing teams. As a non-profit organization, NAMT funds the Festival entirely through donations, sponsorships and contributions.
The festival has introduced musical theatre producers to 228 musicals and 432 writers from around the world. As a direct result of the Festival, more than 85% of the musicals presented have gone on to subsequent readings, workshops, productions and tours, been licensed, and/or recorded on cast albums. Some past festival shows include The Drowsy Chaperone, It Shoulda Been You, Striking 12, Ordinary Days, Thoroughly Modern Millie, among many others.
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Historical Musical Theatre Sightseeing
TheatreWorks Silicon Valley’s Managing Director (and NAMT Board member) Phil Santora was in New York with his partner Christian, and they paid a visit to the former Triangle Shirtwaist Factory building to take a selfie with the postcard from TheatreWorks’ upcoming world premiere production of Triangle (Festival 2012).
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Get Paid To Share Your Opinions And Help NAMT Too!
Do you have opinions? Do you want to get paid to share those opinions and help NAMT at the same time? Opinions 4 Good (OP4G) is an online market research company that provides funding for nonprofits across the country by sharing the fees from their clients with us. Here’s how it works: You sign up for OP4G using this link, and designate a percentage of your fees you’d like donated to NAMT. Then, whenever you have a few minutes, take some market research surveys on the site and we both get paid! It’s that simple. And we promise you won’t get any spam. The average survey pays $3.50 for about 10 minutes of your time.
Plus, OP4G will donate to NAMT for each new member who joins their online survey community, so you can help us just by signing up.
OP4G calls this “digital volunteering.” We call it easy and fun. Members of our staff have signed up and taken the surveys — we’d never recommend it to you if we hadn’t tried it!
Join today and donate to NAMT without spending a dime.
Thanks!
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New Work in Progress: OCTOBER SKY
This month, we check in with Aaron Thielen (Fest ’10, The Bowery Boys), Artistic Director of the Marriott Theatre outside Chicago, and his showOctober Sky, that he has written with fellow Fest Alumnus Michael Mahler (Fest ’09, How Can You Run With a Shell on Your Back?), as they prepare for the premiere this August.
The beloved Universal Pictures film October Sky is now a new musical. It was 1957, and Sputnik lights up the October sky over the small Appalachian mining town of Coalwood, West Virginia. Homer Hickam, the teenage son of a coal miner, is determined not to end up like generations before him. Inspired by the world’s race to space, Homer and his buddies begin to light up the starry skies with their homemade rockets and dreams of glory. This rich and emotional story is for anyone who ever dreamed of something better and reached for the stars.
October Sky was highlighted in our Songwriters Showcase at last year’s Festival. What was the response to the show like after the showcase?
There was an immediate attraction to not only Michael’s music, but to the title and project as a whole. The film really resonated with so many people. The era. The basic American dream of reaching for the stars, and making it. Literally!
October Sky is being presented at Marriott in conjunction with Universal Stage Productions. What has the experience been like working with Universal on their property?
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Festival Show Update: STU FOR SILVERTON
This month, we check in with Peter Duchan and Breedlove, the writers of 2014 Festival show Stu For Silverton, as they prepared for a reading of the show at NAMT member Theater Latte Da last month.
Based on the true story of America’s first transgender mayor and the town that elected him, Stu for Silverton celebrates a new American folk hero from Silverton, Oregon. This heartwarming, all-American new musical blends Our Town and The Rocky Horror Picture Show, testing the boundaries of tolerance as a small community adjusts to big changes.
The summer leading up to last year’s Festival you did some major reworking of the book to Stu for Silverton. What were those changes?
We’re quite fortunate that the real story of Stu Rasmussen and Silverton provides a strong emotional climax. Everything we’ve written builds to that beautiful, true moment of counter-protest staged by the community. Our challenge all along has been creating the right set up for it, giving the audience the information they need for the moment to really land effectively–and not giving them information that muddies the storytelling and weakens that emotional impact. Prior to NAMT, we made a number of changes, particularly to the first act: a new song/sequence to open the show, a new song to introduce Stu’s girlfriend Vic, a new sequence we hoped would explore the tug of war Stu feels between his hometown and the exploration of his identity that occurs in Portland. So, lots of new stuff, much of which we performed at the NAMT Festival.
How did the presentation in the Festival help you discover further changes to make to the show?
The Festival experience was definitely helpful and energized us to make further revisions. We were lucky to have smart, engaged actors in the room, a number of whom graciously offered us their honest reactions during the process. (Annaleigh Ashford, in particular, is a friend of ours, and a smart budding director in her own right, and she gave us some great, generous notes, a number of which we’ve incorporated.) We also met with producers and other theatermakers, gathering reactions and ideas quite helpful to our revisions. The result: we’ve made a number of changes, including writing ANOTHER new song to introduce Vic, as well as reworking the support group sequence, among other things. We learned a ton.
What was the response to the show like after the Festival?
We were thrilled with the response! We worked really hard to shape an abridged, 45-minute Festival draft that would give the audience a fun taste of the show and, hopefully, leave them wanting more. We got a lot of positive reaction from NAMT members. When Theatre Latte Da offered us this workshop, we jumped at the chance to work on the show out of town, out of sight.
You are now preparing for readings of the full script at NAMT member Theater Latte Da in Minneapolis this week. How has it been working on the show again and hearing the full version?
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2015-2016 National Fund for New Musicals Grants Announced
We are thrilled to announce nine awards granted from the National Fund for New Musicals, a major funding program to support NAMT member not-for-profit theatres in their collaborations with writers to create, develop and produce new musicals. Now in its seventh year, the Fund will provide grants totaling $46,000 to ten organizations across the country.
NAMT Executive Director Betsy King Militello stated:
“We are honored and excited to support our member theatres as they work with this inspiring group of writers to develop these innovative and provocative new musicals. With these grants, we have now awarded 77 grants totaling $315,500. These projects will join a growing list of important new musicals added to the canon with support from our National Fund for New Musicals.”
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New Work in Progress: EVER AFTER
This month, we check in with Mark S. Hoebee, Producing Artistic Director at Paper Mill Playhouse, as he tells us about their upcoming production of Ever After.
The world premiere of a brilliant new musical based on the 1998 film starring Drew Barrymore and Anjelica Huston. This is no fairy tale. Ever After sets the record straight on the fable of Cinderella. It was never about fairy godmothers, talking mice, or magic pumpkins. Her name was Danielle and it was always about her wit, her smarts, her strength, and her good friend Leonardo da Vinci. She makes her own dreams come true. Warm and romantic, funny and smart, this is the musical you’ve been waiting for.
How did Ever After find its way to the Playhouse?
Ever After had been on our radar for several years. I saw an early reading of the show and loved the material. I had a meeting with Scott Landis and Philip Morgaman to discuss the show, but Paper Mill wasn’t at a place to take on the project at that time. Then about two years ago, we were working with Kevin McCollum on The Other Josh Cohen and he had joined the producing team on Ever After. Kevin encouraged me to come see another more full presentation of the piece that they were doing, so I went with Todd Schmidt, our Managing Director. Kathleen Marshall, the director/choreographer had assembled a wonderful cast and there was a 9-piece band and it was just wonderful. So we grabbed the opportunity to give the show its first full production.
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Festival Show Update: THE SANDMAN and BLEEDING LOVE
This month, we catch up with Søren Møller, Artistic and Managing Director at Fredericia Theater and New Works Development Center Uterus in Denmark, about their current production of 2013 Festival show, The Sandman, by Robert Taylor and Richard Oberacker, and their upcoming production of 2012 Festival show, Bleeding Love by Jason Schafer, Harris Doran and Arthur Lafrentz Bacon. Both shows will be performed in rep as part of Fredericia Theater’s season.
THE SANDMAN:
Drawn from the more nightmarish fantasy of E.T.A. Hoffmann, author of “The Nutcracker,” comes a new and darkly comic musical tale—The Sandman. When Maria, the wife of an ingenious German clockmaker named Albert Strauss, engages a new nanny, Fraulein Kaeseschweiss, to care for the two children, Nathaniel and Theresa, a series of bizarre and unnatural events begins to unfold. As Theresa falls mysteriously ill, a flamboyant and unconventional physician, Dr. Copelius, is summoned upon the nanny’s recommendation. The doctor comes with a young ward in tow, Clara Stahlbaum, recently orphaned after her entire family was incinerated in an inexplicable Christmas tree fire. And as the Strauss family is thrust ever deeper into chaos, the sinister and Machiavellian forces at play are gradually revealed—forces from which only the children may be able to save them.
BLEEDING LOVE:
It’s always night, it’s always cold and nothing ever grows. A cloistered teen cellist must find a live rose in order to thaw the frozen heart of the rebel punk next door. An eclectic score, ranging from Broadway to classical to rock, beats within this wickedly demented, post-apocalyptic musical comedy.
You are preparing something that is almost never heard of: two world premieres of two new musicals in rep, which happen to both be past NAMT Festival shows. How did you come to the idea of doing the shows in rep?
Getting people to see new material is not always easy, and being situated 100 minutes out of Copenhagen, I think it is attractive for more people to take a trip here to see two new shows in a day. Also—having specialized in digital set design, we can shift the setup for the shows much faster than with a more traditional setup. And seeing almost the same cast performing two very different new musicals in one day is a real treat. Also—how often do you get to hear two brand new Bruce Coughlin orchestrations in a day?
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Festival Show Update: TRIANGLE
This month, we check in with alumni Curtis Moore and Thomas Mizer, as they tell us about the upcoming production of 2012 Festival show, Triangle, at TheatreWorks Silicon Valley.
Two love stories, set in the same New York City building but a hundred years apart, weave together across the century as long buried secrets are uncovered and ghosts of the past begin to influence the future.
Last time we checked in with Triangle, you were preparing for your first on-its-feet production at Lyric Theatre of Oklahoma City. How was that experience, working with the team in OKC?
The workshop production at Lyric was a dream come true. Truly. Their technical facilities are first-rate, and the staff and actors were passionate advocates for the piece. It was the theater’s first experience working on a new musical so we were all learning and growing together. They, and the city as whole, embraced the show with a dedication that was inspiring. Even walking into a local store, people would find out why we were in town and they’d know about the show and be excited and proud that OKC was creating something. Some people would say they were coming again and bringing friends because they loved it so much. How special is that to feel like an entire community wants to collaborate on a new musical! (And believe us, the clerk at the OKC wine store definitely had an important role in the development of the show.)
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Observations From The Success Survey
We recently completed our second bi-annual Success Survey, and while the full results are only available to NAMT members who participated in the survey, we wanted to share a few interesting findings with you here.
The survey is designed to give members a sense of how various shows have done for other member theatres in the last two years, as well as identify trends such as popular titles for production and theatres’ willingness to take risks. Because “success” in art is a relative term, and our members have wildly varying missions, we ask not just for financial information, but also how audiences responded to the shows (maybe the houses were smaller than hoped for, but those who came were overjoyed, leading to good word of mouth for the next production) and if they met the theatre’s expectations (some companies program riskier work expecting to take a loss because they feel it’s important to share this work with their audiences). We also ask if the show is considered risky for this theatre – again, a relative assessment – and if marketing was beefed up to account for any such risk.
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New Work in Progress: SENSE AND SENSIBILITY
This month, we check in with Rick Boynton, Creative Producer at Chicago Shakespeare Theater, as he tells us about their upcoming production of Sense and Sensibility, by Paul Gordon (Fest ’13-Analog & Vinyl; Fest ’06-Jane Austen’s Emma).
Sense and Sensibility traces the lives of Elinor & Marianne Dashwood—two sisters whose fortunes change following their father’s untimely death. One cool and deliberate, the other consumed by youthful passion, Elinor and Marianne journey to make life anew while testing the bonds of sisterhood and the power of love.
How did Chicago Shakespeare meet Paul Gordon and why was he an artist you wanted to work with?
I first was introduced to Paul when I was serving on the Festival committee and read his Emma in 2006. I loved the adaptation. Paul is such a gifted composer, lyricist and book writer. Not only is his music beautiful, but he brings classical text to life with a great sense of wonder, passion and humor. I knew we had to work with him.
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Festival Show Update: FACTORY GIRLS
Last month, we caught up with alumni Creighton Irons and Sean Mahoney about the development of their 2009 Festival show, Factory Girls, and their upcoming reading and concert in NYC.
In 1843 in the new industrial city of Lowell, Massachusetts, best friends Sarah Bagley and Harriet Farley are using their published writing to prove to the world that “factory girls” are virtuous and intelligent and have accepted their positions as laborers voluntarily. But when a fellow spinner is worked to death, Sarah decides to use her pen to lash out against the corporation, jeopardizing their friendship and shaping the fate of the American worker.
Factory Girls was very well-received at the Festival but it was at a very early stage of development. What did you learn about the show from being in the Festival?
We loved being a part of the Festival in 2009. The show itself was still being written by just the two of us (Sean and Creighton), and while we had a wonderful experience working with [director] Vicky Bussert and an amazing cast, we knew the songs were much stronger than the book at that time. Our NAMT consultants have been such incredible supporters of us and of the show as we’ve sought to improve the book in various workshops since then.
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New Work in Progress: STAGGER LEE
This month, we check in with Lee Trull, Director of New Play Development at Dallas Theater Center, as he tells us about their upcoming production of Stagger Lee, by Will Power and Justin Ellington, which was a previous recipient of the NAMT National Fund for New Musicals Project Development Grant.
A highlight this season is the world premiere of Stagger Lee, a musical that takes its title from the century-old folk song that became a Number One R&B hit for Lloyd Price in 1959. The story spans the 20th Century, tracing mythical characters in their quest to achieve the American Dream. The deep-seated themes of racism and the raw power of human will are sure to give you chills. And the music—from Joplin-inspired tunes to R&B and hip-hop—will definitely get your feet moving.
How did the development of Stagger Lee come about for Dallas Theater Center?
Southern Methodist University’s Meadows School of the Arts gives out an award called the Meadows Prize. It’s a commission to an artist in the middle of his or her career for a new piece to be produced at an arts institution in Dallas. Meadows approached us about six years ago to see if there was a writer we would be interested in developing a piece with. The obvious choice was Will Power. The way his plays examine social justice and American history/mythology in highly theatrical ways fits perfectly with DTC’s mission. Since then, Will joined our staff through a Mellon Foundation Grant as Playwright-In-Residence and joined SMU’s faculty as Artist-In-Residence. Stagger Lee grew out of that early commission. It started as a play and grew into a big musical.
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Festival Show Update: COME FROM AWAY
This month, we catch up with alumni Irene Sankoff and David Hein about the development of their 2013 Festival show, Come From Away, and their upcoming production at La Jolla Playhouse.
Come From Away is an original, rock-infused world-premiere musical based on the true story of when the isolated town of Gander, Newfoundland played host to the world. What started as an average day in a small town turned into an international sleep-over when 38 planes, carrying thousands of people from across the globe, were diverted to Gander on September 11, 2001. Undaunted by culture clashes and language barriers, the people of Gander cheered the stranded travelers with music, an open bar and the recognition that we’re all part of a global family.
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Festival Alumni in the News
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New York Times Inducts Festival Alumni Into American Songbook Canon
In a “Critic’s Notebook” article in The New York Times, Setting New Standards: American Songbook Series Reshapes the Canon, Stephen Holden and other Times critics and editors suggest “songs that could further expand the notion of the songbook.” Their picks included several Festival of New Musicals alumni!
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Welcome to Our New Website!
I feel (and some of you may, too) like I’ve been talking about our new website forever. We’ve known for at least two years that our old site was nearing the end of its lifespan, and started making necessary arrangements. Bidding for developers started almost a year ago. The Board approved our plan last spring. The design process began over the summer, then got put on hold because, as you may have heard, we get a little busy in September and October. There was a flurry of intense activity in November and December in which concepts became reality, we learned what did and didn’t work, what changes for change’s sake sounded great but weren’t, the old words and images made their way to the new pages, and our amazing developers, Nick Keenan and his team at NickXD, worked their butts off to say yes to nearly every “what if” and “wouldn’t it be cool?” we threw at him. Then holiday break and another pause. So close! And finally, shiny and new for 2015!