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NEA Awards Grants to NAMT and Our Members

The National Endowment for the Arts has recently announced that it will award over $27 million in grants to fund artistic projects and research, with $3.24 million going to companies working in the field of Theater & Musical Theatre. Many NAMT members have been selected to receive grants in this cycle, including $55,000 to NAMT itself, in support of our Festival of New Musicals and Fall Conference. Congratulations to those members receiving grants in this round of NEA funding, including:
Ars Nova
Atlantic Theater Company
Diversionary Theatre
East West Players
Horizon Theatre Company
La Jolla Playhouse
MCC Theater
NAMT
North Carolina Theatre
The Old Globe
Olney Theatre Center
Philadelphia Theatre Company
Phoenix Theatre
Playwrights Horizons
The Public Theater
Red Mountain Theatre Company
Roundabout Theatre Company
Seattle Rep
Village Theatre
ZACH Theatre
Additionally, two Festival shows have received grants for productions taking place within the granting cycle. Signature Theatre (Arlington, VA) received a grant for the world premiere of Gun & Powder (Fest ’18) by Ross Baum and Angelica Chéri opening this month. NAMT member East West Players and Mixed Blood (Minneapolis, MN) received grants for upcoming productions of Interstate (Fest ’19) by Melissa Li and Kit Yan.
Congratulations to all, and thank you to the NEA for supporting arts organizations throughout the country! For a full list of the recipients, visit the NEA’s website. 

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Time Magazine: The Top 10 Plays and Musicals of 2017

This week, Time Magazine released their list of the Top 10 Plays and Musicals of 2017, and two musicals in the NAMT family made the list! Come From Away (NAMT Festival ’13) by Irene Sankoff and David Hein and The Band’s Visit (NFNM Cycle 8 Production Grant recipient) by David Yazbeck and Itamar Moses respectively claimed the fourth and second spots on the list.
Both shows have been supported by NAMT members throughout their development processes. After its 2013 Festival presentation, Come From Away was first produced at La Jolla Playhouse with Junkyard Dog Productions, both NAMT members. The Broadway production claims seven NAMT members as producers, including Junkyard Dog Productions, Michael Rubinoff with Sheridan College, Nancy Nagel Gibbs, Spencer Ross, Yonge Street Theatricals, Wendy Gillespie & La Jolla Playhouse. The Band’s Visit received a Production Grant from the National Fund for New Musicals for its Off Broadway production at NAMT member Atlantic Theater Company, and bookwriter Itamar Moses is a NAMT Festival alumnus for his 2012 Festival show Nobody Loves You. Additionally, two plays produced by NAMT member The Public Theater were included in the list, including their production of Sweat which was named the number one play of the year.

The stupefying boredom of forgotten hamlet in the Israeli desert, where the residents are jolted out of their trance-like existence by a visiting band of Egyptian musicians. The inhabitants of a remote rocky island off the coast of Canada warmly embrace the passengers of 38 jets stranded there in the wake of 9/11… In this most polarized of years, a number of the best productions celebrate man’s shared humanity and the possibility of even the most entrenched enemies finding common ground and a path forward.

Visit the Time Magazine website to see the full list.

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American Theatre has a great report on NAMT member La Jolla Playhouse’s new audience engagement program, initiated in 2015 with a Building Audiences for Sustainability grant from the Wallace Foundation. Since receiving the grant, the Playhouse has used their resources to create and sustain programs that will allow them “to build an audience that is more reflective of San Diego.” Through interviews with staff and board members, increased patron participation and commissioning new works, the Playhouse has been hard at work on making this immersive community engagement effort one that will have a direct and lasting impact on the theatre’s work.

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Festival Show Update: Come From Away

In honor of Come From Away‘s upcoming Broadway opening, this month we checked in with Irene Sankoff and David Hein to see how the piece has changed since we last spoke to them after the 2013 Festival, and what’s different about preparing for a Broadway opening. We also took a look back at the show’s beginnings in a interview with Michael Rubinoff.
The last time we checked in with you both, you were preparing for Come From Away’s world premiere at La Jolla Playhouse. The show has had a whirlwind journey since then! What have been some of your favorite moments along the way?
David: La Jolla was incredible! It was our first production, our first reviews, and our first time working with most of our team.
Irene: We went from being this unknown show to people lining up for 3 hours in the hopes of getting tickets. I was walking around in a daze. Then at Seattle Rep, the theatre was much bigger and I remember the look on the cast’s faces after the blackout when the audience responded. They said after it was like being hit by a wall of sound.
David: The phone lines crashed there because of people looking for tickets. And they flew the Mayor of Gander, Newfoundland out—they declared it “Gander Day” and gave him a key to the city. Seattle was very good to us.
Irene: Ford’s Theatre in DC was surreal because there were so many politicians in the audience, from both sides of the aisle.  And they reacted the same way to this story of kindness—with laughter and tears. We also had a lot of repeat visitors—some who were survivors of the attack in D.C. and some who had lost loved ones.

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Festival Show Update: The Fabulous Fitches

The Fabulous Fitches (formerly known as Palm Beach), written by Robert Cary, Benjamin Feldman and David Gursky, has evolved quite a bit since it was presented in NAMT’s Festival in 2001. This month, we checked in with the team to see where the piece is now.

What was the initial reaction to The Fabulous Fitches when it was first presented at the 2001 Festival?
The response was wonderful, and it actually brought the show to the attention of William Morris (now WME), who have represented it ever since.
What developmental work have you done on the show since it was at the NAMT Festival?
The show has had a production (at La Jolla Playhouse in 2005) and several developmental readings, based on what we learned and wanted to explore further in the show.
How has the show evolved in the years since the Festival, and what message does the show hold for audiences today?
The Fabulous Fitches was, in its original form, an homage to screwball Hollywood comedies of the 1930s, in the vein of Bringing Up Baby or My Man Godfrey.  Over time, however, we realized that—while the screwball genre helped dictate the tone of the show—what we were really talking about was the American Dream:  who gets to live it?  And to whom is it denied?  We began to ask ourselves, “Who really has a place at the American table?”.  And then we put that question through the lens of a brisk 30s-style musical comedy, played very much for laughs.
What have been some of the joys and challenges for you as a writing team as the show has seen more development?
It’s always a joy to continue to have a relationship with a show that is so personal, for all three of us, and which is also the first thing we wrote as a team.  The challenges have to do with the fact that the show isn’t really like a lot of other shows, and thus harder to “pitch”—it’s funny and accessible, but it’s political, too, and it doesn’t come with a pre-sold “name brand” which makes it immediately clear what to expect.  On the other hand, that may prove one of its assets; it’s very much its own thing.
What would you like to see as a next step for the show?
The show imagines a tremendously wealthy titan of industry, who controls many brands, deciding to run for political office despite having no real qualifications other than his fame and money—seriously.  So, despite the first draft being written several years ago, it’s become surprisingly (I’d even say shockingly) topical.  It’s also about people thinking one group can lay exclusive claim to “real” American values; again, more topical than we ever imagined it would be by 2016.  We had a wonderful developmental reading with Josh Prince directing this summer, and we’d like to find a home for a full production.  It seems like the right time, to say the least.

For more information about The Fabulous Fitches, contact Susan Weaving at WME.
Photo: Leo McKnight’s chorus girls (L-R: Taryn Darr, Jennifer Evans and Erica Piccininni) entertain the crowd in The Fabulous Fitches, the world premiere production at La Jolla Playhouse. Photo credit: Ken Howard

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Come From Away Sets Broadway Flight Plan

It has been announced that 2013 Festival show Come From Away will open on Broadway in the spring of 2017, produced by NAMT member Junkyard Dog Productions. Variety reports on the details:

“Come from Away,” the musical that earned enthusiastic reviews in an initial co-production at [NAMT Member] La Jolla Playhouse and Seattle Repertory Theater, has mapped out a road to Broadway, landing in New York in spring 2017 following engagements in Washington, D.C. and Toronto.
Junkyard Dog, the production company behind Tony winner “Memphis,” will produce the commercial staging. “Memphis” director Christopher Ashley, who is also the artistic director at La Jolla Playhouse, will reprise his directorial duties on the musical by Irene Sankoff and David Hein. Kelly Devine (“Rocky”) choreographs.

Congratulations to the Come From Away team! Read more at Variety.com.

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9/11-Themed ‘Come From Away’ Takes a Seattle Layover

American Theatre recently checked in with the writers and director of Fest ’13 show Come From Away, currently in its second production at Seattle Repertory Theatre. James Hebert writes:

By the time Come From Away debuted in La Jolla in June, it was a streamlined, propulsive show that did admirable justice to the full saga in not much more than that same 90-minute time span. The musical’s cast gets a major workout, playing the visitors as well as the townspeople and numerous other characters […]
The show also moves briskly to Kelly Devine’s quick-shifting choreography, driven by one of the most distinctive musical theatre scores in memory. Sankoff and Hein’s score draws deeply from the music of Newfoundland, for a blend of Celtic, folk, and country-rock, played on such non-standard pit instruments as bodhrans, Irish bouzoukis, and uilleann pipes.
It’s a sound that feels very rooted in the place it sprang from, which adds to the sense of a strange new world these displaced passengers are encountering as they venture into the town and interact with the locals. Director Christopher Ashley, also the Playhouse’s artistic director, said that enhancing the feeling of both wonder and apprehension has been a chief goal as Come From Away has made its latest journey from La Jolla to Seattle. (The two theatres are coproducers .)

Read the whole story at americantheatre.com.

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Welcome to NewFriendLand

Susan Fairbrook reports on the premiere of Come From Away (Festival 2013) at La Jolla Playhouse:

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Come From Away Gives Wing To Hope

Come From Away (Festival 2013) is currently receiving its world premiere production at member theatre La Jolla Playhouse. In The San Diego Union-Tribune, writers Irene Sankoff and David Hein talk about the genesis of the show:

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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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New Work in Progress: CHASING THE SONG


An interview with Dana Harrel, Associate Producer, and Grabriel Greene, Director of New Play Development, at La Jolla Playhouse, about their upcoming production of Chasing a Song, by Joe DiPietro and David Bryan, directed by Chris Ashley.  


Elegant Edie’s team of ambitious hitmakers are upended by the arrival of the newest aspiring songwriter — Edie’s daughter Ginny. As Ginny strives to earn her place in the male-dominated world of the early 1960s music scene, American rock and roll finds itself under siege from the incoming British invasion.

Chasing The Song is a reunion of the Memphis team (director, writers, producers) and La Jolla Playhouse. Why was La Jolla Playhouse excited to work onChasing the Song?  

Chasing the Song continues Memphis’s exploration into the history of American rock and roll, and the way that it shaped – and was shaped by – social movements. Memphis tracked how music was a bridge during the turbulent racial conflicts of the 1950’s and 60’s. Chasing the Song carries the story forward, and focuses on a completely different part of our social history: the attempts of women to break into and succeed in male-dominated fields.

 

La Jolla Playhouse has been working on the show for a while now. What has changed, shifted and grown with the show over the last year? 

We started working on Chasing the Song as part of our DNA New Play Series in 2013. The work we were able to do during that workshop process was invaluable in discovering that the central arc of the musical was a mother-daughter story. This happened right as we were about to give our first concert reading. It was a wonderful and nerve-wracking moment. A lot of the work over the last year was making this piece as much about strengthening the relationships between characters as it is about the music industry in the 1960’s.

 

Why do you think Chasing the Song will sing to your audience and be a good fit for this season?

La Jolla Playhouse audiences love being on the ground floor for a brand new piece and being part of the process. Many have also been following the show since last year’s DNA workshop, so they already feel an attachment to the project. At the core, it’s a great rock and roll musical with a strong story and terrific music – people will enjoy it, just like they loved Memphis.  

 

What are you hoping to discover as the show gets up on its feet for the first time? 
 We still have a lot of work to do on the show, and we really won’t know exactly what that work is until we get on our feet. That’s the great thing about the Page To Stage program here at the Playhouse: we have the time to make the discoveries that make the show better. Our Page To Stage workshop productions never officially open to the press, and are designed to give creative teams the freedom to continue working on a show throughout the entire performance run. Our audiences help us a great deal in that process. We learn things based on their reactions during the show, and we also hold nightly talkbacks where they get to share their feedback. 

 

What are the plans for the show after La Jolla? 

There are currently no plans after La Jolla. Of course we hope more audiences get to see this production, but right now we are focused on putting up the best show we possibly can for La Jolla Playhouse audiences.

 

Why should people swing by La Jolla to catchChasing the Song?  

The reason people should catch it – beyond the simple fact that it’s a tremendously fun show – is because they get to be part of the ongoing development of an exciting new musical as it comes to life on stage for the first time.


For more information about the show, please visitwww.lajollaplayhouse.org

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FROM THE ROAD: A Coast to Coast Summer

One of my favorite parts of my job is getting the chance to visit our members around the country.  There is no better way to take the pulse of the industry and help discover new ways for us to serve our members than to meet them on their home turf, see their shows and meet their staffs.  Summer is the busiest travel time for the NAMT staff because it is when the number of shows skyrocket in our member theatres.  My summer was filled with 10 productions (7 of them premieres),  2 workshops and 6 readings from New York to California, from Vermont to Tennessee.  We a few Festival shows and National Fund for New Musicals (NFNM) grant recipients along the way.

Here is the quick rundown (NAMT member theatres and Festival shows are bolded blue):

MAY

Los Angeles, CA- World premiere of Los Otros at Center Theatre Group 
San Diego, CA- World premiere of Nobody Loves You (NAMT Fest ’12, past NFNM Project Development Grant) and Scottsboro Boys at The Old Globe, world premiere of Hands on a Hardbody at La Jolla Playhouseand the chance to sit in on a rehearsal for Harmony, Kansas (NFNM Production Grant, past Writers Residency Grant) at Diversionary Theatre.
New York, NY- World premiere of February House (past NFNM Project Development Grant) at The Public Theater, reading of Suprema (NFNM Writers Residency Grant) at Ars Nova and Speargrove Presents (NFNM Writers Residency Grant) at New York Theatre Barn

JUNE
Connecticut- Readings of When We Met and String at The O’Neill Theatre Center, production of Mame at Goodspeed Musicals

JULY
New York, NY- Production of Triassic Parq (by Festival alumnus Marshall Pailet) produced by Amas Musical Theatre and New Musical Development Foundation at SoHo Rep  
East Haddam, CT- Final dress of Carousel at Goodspeed Musicals
Poughkeepsie, NY- Workshop of Murder Ballad (by Fest alumna Julia Jordan) at Vassar Powerhouse

AUGUST

Rhinebeck, NY- Reception for Beatsville (NAMT Fest ’08) at Rhinebeck Writers Retreat
Palo Alto, CA- TheatreWorks Festival of New Works with readings of Being Earnest and Triangle (NAMT Fest ’12) and a developmental production of The Trouble With Doug (NAMT Fest ’10)

SEPTEMBER

New York, NY- Reading of notes to MariAnne (NAMT Fest ’11) at New York Theatre Workshop
Weston, VT- World premiere of Pregnancy Pact (NAMT Fest ’11) at Weston Playhouse Theatre Co.  
Crossville, TN- Regional premiere of Golden Boy of the Blue Ridge (NAMT Fest ’11) at Cumberland County Playhouse
New York, NY- Broadway Bound concert at Merkin Hall featuring songs from Watt?!? and The Dogs of Pripyat, both from the 2011 Festival 

And I am pretty sure I am missing a few.

I got a lot more out of these trips than a wallet full of receipts and slight confusion as to my time zone.  I was fortified in my belief that our members and alumni are creating, producing and exploring the best musical theatre in the country.  They are continually engaging, challenging and building audiences through their great work.  They are not resting on their laurels but pushing forward.

It is very hard to find a show today that does not have the NAMT stamp somewhere on it…and that makes me very proud to be just a small part of any show that adds to the crazy tapestry of musicals across the country.  The great work continues all over the country, and I’m the lucky one who gets to take in at least a fraction of it.

Branden Huldeen
New Works Director

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