This month, we caught up with John Jiler and Georgia Stitt, the writers of 2010 Festival show Big Red Sun to check in with them before the show receives its world premiere at NAMT member 11th Hour Theatre Company. The show received a Writers Residency Grant from NAMT’s National Fund for New Musicals in our 2015-2016 Granting Cycle.
We are thrilled to announce eleven 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 eighth year, the Fund will provide grants totaling $43,000 to twelve 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 88 grants totaling $358,500. These projects will join a growing list of important new musicals added to the canon with support from our National Fund for New Musicals.
This month, we checked in with Festival Alumni John Jiler and Georgia Stitt about their 2010 Festival Show, Big Red Sun.
Big Red Sun has gone through quite a bit of rewriting in the past few years, how would you summarize the show for those who don’t know it or need reminding?
Big Red Sun tells the story of a family of musicians. Eddie and Helen Daimler were great swing musicians in the 1940s, but now in the early 1960s their teenage son Harry, a budding songwriter himself, lives alone with his mother and writes songs about his great war-hero father. In an effort to write more truthfully, Harry unearths a dark family secret. World War II carved a silent divide between those who fought and those who waited – a truth unshared. In a few short years, the simple melodies of Kern and Berlin were replaced by the dizzying energy of jazz and the beginnings of rock and roll. This is the story of a family that changed as much as their music did.
The Dallas Morning News reports on NAMT member WaterTower Theatre’s ambitious undertaking, the world premiere musical Creep. The show’s journey wound up involving three NAMT members — our favorite kind of networking success story!
[WaterTower Artistic Director Terry] Martin was so intrigued, he directed a workshop of Creep as part of WaterTower’s annual Out of the Loop Fringe Festival in 2010. There was positive feedback, but Martin didn’t think it was ready for a full production….
Uptown Players staged a workshop in 2013 under the direction of Michael Serrecchia, a former star of Broadway’s original Chorus Line, who is now Musical Theatre Program Chair at KD Studio. Fowler added new songs and fresh visual touches, including having ensemble members portray the London fog.
Martin came to see it. He was impressed. There were many reasons not to do it. There were no big or familiar names to promote with the project. Fowler was a first-time musical composer. It was not a star vehicle. The subject matter was dark and, as a mystery, hard to summarize.
Still, Martin wanted to do it….
Putting the pieces together, however, would be tricky. A new musical is tough to finance because everything has to be done from scratch, from the orchestrations to the costumes and sets.
“I knew it could be staged if we got the right people at the table, including a strong director who could bring a fresh eye to it and who had experience developing new musicals,” Martin says.
He asked the National Alliance for Musical Theatre in New York for a recommendation. They suggested Kate Galvin, associate producer of the 11th Hour Theatre Company in Philadelphia.
Read the whole story in The Dallas Morning News.
Last month, we checked in with Kate Galvin, Associate Producer and General Manager at 11th Hour Theatre Company, as she told us about their brand new musical, Field Hockey Hot.
Field Hockey Hot is a smart and entertaining new satire about a high school girls’ field hockey team, their ambitious coach and America’s favorite pastime…winning! When Applebee Academy’s star goalie is injured two weeks before the championship, Coach Shipley Barnes will stop at nothing to win the North American title. It’s a hilarious and zany comedy featuring a pop score inspired by iconic musicians of the 1980s and a world where field hockey rules all!
An interview with the writers of Fest 2011 show Lizzie (formerly known as Lizzie Borden), Steven Cheslik-deMeyer (SCD), Alan Stevens Hewitt (ASH) and Tim Maner (TM) about the upcoming concert, three productions around the world and a studio cast album!
In 1892 on a sweltering August day in a small New England town, “somebody” brutally murdered a well-to-do elderly man and his second wife with an axe. Lizzie Borden, their youngest daughter, was the primary suspect, arrested and tried. Without any witnesses to the hideous crime, she was acquitted, and the murders remain unsolved to this day. Though Lizzie was ultimately declared innocent according to the law, her infamy lives on.
Lizzie has had quite a bit of development since it left the Festival. Other than the new name, what has changed with the show since it was at the Festival?
ASH: If you think of the show as a gatefold vinyl double album (a la Tommy, or Jesus Christ Superstar), pretty much the entire Side 1 has been rewritten, with the addition of two solos for Lizzie and one for Alice to allow the audience to understand where they are starting from and to get onboard with them. Also, one of the central musical/lyrical themes (which is reprised, transformed, at the end) is now introduced in a completely different way from how it had been previously. Whereas it had been an internal dialogue for Alice, it is now a lullabye (“Maybe Someday”) sung by Alice to Lizzie. It brings the harrowing “Side 1” to a gentle close.
SCD: We wanted to strengthen the introduction of Lizzie’s friend Alice who becomes so pivotal in the story, so we wrote a solo for her early in the first act. We also rewrote Lizzie’s song “Gotta Get Out Of Here” to be more explicit and hard-hitting. Those are the big changes, but we also made lots of little tweaks here and there.
You had the opportunity to have the show developed at Baldwin Wallace University and at the Village Theatre. What did you learn about the show as it changed theatres, actresses and regions?
SCD: The BWU production was the first time the show was produced where we weren’t closely involved. It was great to find out that we really can hand it to a group of talented folks and feel confident that our idea of what the show is remains intact. It helps that the BW students directed by Vicky Bussert are phenomenally talented! We made discoveries about the first act and the Alice character that led to the changes mentioned above. Village gave us the opportunity for a trial run of lots of new elements: Alice’s new song and the new orchestrations, a more rock and roll-style set and lighting. The folks at Village gave us great support in the process.
TM: We’ve learned new things every time, from new design teams, from different levels of production, from the unique variations all of the amazing women who have taken on the roles have shown us. We’ve gotten to really look at the show from different perspectives that have strengthened it at every turn.
What has surprised you about people’s response to the show outside of New York City?
ASH: I don’t know if there have really been any “surprises” for me about how Lizzie has been received. It certainly has been thrilling though, and immensely gratifying to experience it connecting so strongly with people.
The show played last month at TUTS in Houston, having a concert version in Philly this fall with 11th Hour Theatre Co. and then jumping over to Denmark for a production in the spring. What is it like to have your show spreading around the country?
SCD:It’s tremendous! This show has been cooking for a long, long time. It’s always felt really special to us, like it had the potential to connect with a wide audience. Now that that is starting to happen, it’s incredibly gratifying. As an artist that’s what you always hope will happen.
ASH:Around the country AND THE WORLD! (Cue demonic laughter….) Are you kidding? It’s AMAZING. I’m particularly interested to see how this subject from classic American mythology goes down with folks who have a different cultural perspective.
TM: It’s kinda unreal, but amazing. All those years ago when Lizzie began it was really pure fantasy to think anything like this could happen, and now it’s happening. It’s a rare thing in life to actually have a fantasy come true, and I’m very thankful.
A studio cast album is being released this fall. Tell us a bit about recording the album and working with that cast.
SCD: The conceit of Lizziehas always been that it is a rock concept album come to life on the stage, despite the fact that until now the album only existed in our minds. Now it’s real. It’s great to have this thing that we can hand people and say, “This is the show. Everything you need to know about Lizzie is here on this record.” And the guys who play on it and the women who sing it blow me away every time I listen.
ASH: Well, we were very fortunate that we were able to get all the planets to align. Much credit to our producer Brisa Trinchero for green-lighting it and actually making it happen and to Broadway Records for their commitment to the project. I don’t even know where to start talking about the album cast… Carrie Manolakos, Storm Large, Carrie Cimma, Ryah Nixon. Incredible, one-of-a-kind talents, all. Really, so privileged to have been able to work with them, and they each turned in phenomenal performances that reward repeated listens. I am very proud of what we accomplished. I can’t wait for people to hear it. And hear these women.
TM: The women are just amazing. Incredible singers/performers, and great people to work with. Same for the band/musicians. It was an incredible team effort from artists, to producers, to graphic designer, to our amazing engineer and more.
What are your hopes for the Borden sisters in the next few years?
TM: I hope the House Of Borden continues to expand to include more theaters, more audiences and more amazing artists through new productions, concerts and the release of the album. I want to attend many more opening nights.
ASH: I would love as many people as possible to have the opportunity to connect with Lizzie. I love the idea that, with the record available online, a kid in Japan, or Alaska, or Brazil, or Iceland, or Lithuania, could potentially find his or her way into the piece. And I would love to see people continue to come together in dark rooms all over the world and experience great artists bringing it to life right in front of their eyes and ears.
SCD:More productions! We’re at the end of the option period with the producers we’ve been working with the last couple years, so we’re giving a lot of thought to next steps. We would all love a big New York production, since New York is home, but that’s the tough nut to crack. Everything is kind of in flux right now. Stay tuned!
For more information on Lizzie, please visit www.lizziethemusical.com