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15-Minute Musical Challenge

Help Celebrate the Power of Musical Theatre

In all times, but especially during challenging times, we believe that musical theatre has the power to elevate the human experience and uplift each other.

Most of us will spend more time at home in the coming weeks, and we know that the current health crisis is taking a major emotional and financial toll. We hope we can offer a bit of an inspired incentive by inviting you to use this socially distanced time as an opportunity for musical theatre creativity. With the generous support of the Alhadeff Family Charitable Foundation we are excited to announce the NAMT 15-Minute Musical Challenge.

We are calling for submissions of 15 minutes of brand-new material by May 15, 2020. This can be a complete, 15-minute musical or 15 minutes of a new full-length project. While we recognize the current crisis will be on our collective minds, this is a call for musicals about absolutely anything and everything. Whatever idea has been percolating…now’s the time! Submitted musicals must be written after March 19, 2020 to be eligible. Winning submissions will receive a cash prize, through the generous and enthusiastic support of the Alhadeff Family Charitable Foundation.

To submit, follow the link at the bottom of this page to the application form. The application will ask for:

  • Basic information about the writer(s)
  • A PDF of the material
  • 2-3 demos (demos should be composer demos, recorded simply on your phone or computer)

Other information:

  • This will be a blind review process and the script and demos cannot include writer information
  • One submission per writer
  • All writers are eligible to submit (US and International)
  • Digital submissions only
  • This is for brand-new work only, written after March 19, 2020

Questions can be emailed to ciera@namt.org.

The application is now closed. Applicants will be updated on their status via email in mid-August.

Please note, this is not a submission for the 2020 Festival of New Musicals. Those applications are closed and the selection process is continuing as outlined on our website.

Header Image: L-R: Writers of 2018 Festival Show Gun & Powder Ross Baum and Angelica Chéri in rehearsal for the Festival with director Warren Adams. Photo by Ric Kallaher.

This page was last updated on 07/20/2020