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New Work in Progress: Fredericia Teater

Søren Møller, the creative producer at Fredericia Teater in Denmark, has been bringing NAMT Festival shows to Europe for innovative productions. This month, we reached out to him to learn more about the theatre’s history, and his process working with new musicals.
Fredericia has a long history of producing new musicals; how does this relate to the theatre’s mission, and what have been some of your favorite shows to produce?
Our mission is to produce new musicals only. All works are either developed here, co-developed or have never played Denmark before.

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Festival Show Update: LIZZIE

Steven Cheslik-DeMeyer, Tim Maner and Alan Stevens Hewitt recently began licensing their 2010 Festival show LIZZIE. Now that they’ve begun licensing the show, we wanted to check in with LIZZIE one last time to find out what this new step means for the show.
LIZZIE has had quite the journey since it appeared in the 2010 Festival! Can you tell us a little bit about the developmental path that brought the show to its current form?
SC: In the 2 years following NAMT, we did a developmental production at Village Theatre in Washington, a concert at Ars Nova in New York, and a co-production of Baldwin Wallace University and Playhouse Square in Cleveland, directed by Vicky Bussert who we met when she directed our NAMT presentation. All those productions were very different, and working with such different directors and actors was great for allowing us to see how the show worked and to zero in on things that needed to be sharpened. We did a lot of rewriting in those years, added a few new songs and reworked whole sections. And we changed the name of the show from Lizzie Borden to just LIZZIE.
Then we made the album! We always described LIZZIE as a concept album come to life, but it was just a way of talking about the show. There was no actual album. But in 2013, Alan completely orchestrated the show and produced the recording, which we approached more like a rock record than a cast album. At that point, the show really felt “finished” to us. (The album is on Broadway Records and is available as a CD, digital download, and vinyl.)
Since then we’ve had productions at TUTS in Houston, Portland Center Stage, Fredericia Teater in Denmark, and Ray of Light Theatre in San Francisco.

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Festival Shows in the News

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FESTIVAL SHOW UPDATE: Lizzie

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

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25 DAYS OF NAMT: Listen Up!

Day 3

Many NAMT shows go on to record cast albums. Here are a few shows that have recently gone through this exciting process. Click on each album cover to hear songs from the show or purchase the tracks!

 
 

*Lizzie will be released October 8th. Jump on this exciting pre-order right now!

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Festival Shows in the News

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Festival Show Update: LIZZIE BORDEN

An interview with Steven Cheslik-deMeyer, Tim Maner and Alan Stevens Hewitt about what is new with their 2010 Festival Show, Lizzie (other than its title!).

What was the audience’s response to Lizzie after the Festival?
Audience responses have been incredibly gratifying.  At the Festival, the tremendous show of support from the NAMT community was overwhelming—there were so many great moments. One of our favorites: an older man came up to Alan saying “You know what you’ve done here, don’t you? This is Tommy meets Sweeney Todd!” Well, besides the fact that we love both of those and it’s very flattering to be compared to them, we’ve always seen Lizzieas somehow situated exactly between those two worlds, so for this guy to get that was a great sign for us that we’d succeeded.

What has changed in the show since the Festival?
We’ve made a handful of tweaks and a couple of bigger changes. There are 2 whole new songs. One is a solo for Lizzie, “This Is Not Love,” near the beginning of the show that we hope gives the audience a clearer idea of where she’s starting from emotionally, psychologically. We also replaced the ending with a less ambiguous statement of Lizzie’s apotheosis into legend, “Into Your Wildest Dreams.” And we have officially dropped “Borden” from the title—the show is now called simply Lizzie.  

You recently had a change of commercial producers.  How did that come about and what was the decision process like for you to decide to change things up?

We’ve been lucky enough to have very passionate and committed people believe in and support Lizziethroughout her development. We are psyched to now be working with Brisa Trinchero, Van Dean and Kenny Howard, whose producing credits among them include Peter and the Starcatcher, Evita, The Gershwins’ Porgy and BessHow to Succeed…Bonnie & Clyde and others. We met Brisa and Van through NAMT, of course, and Kenny through Van. Lizzieis not a conventional musical and this team really gets it.   

Baldwin Wallace University and PlayhouseSquare recently did a production of Lizzie in Cleveland.  What did you guys learn from hearing the show on college voices?
Vicky Bussert has some ferociously talented charges in her care and she gets knock-out performances from them! What was especially fun for us was that she double-cast the show, so we got to see back-to-back performances by different casts but with the same direction, staging, choreo, design, etc. It’s nice to see, despite how tightly constructed and through-composed the show is, how much wiggle-room there still is for the actors. It was also great to experience the show with college audiences, who had no reservations about cheering, applauding and otherwise reacting to it like the intense rock concert/theatre hybrid it is.

Village Theatre is preparing for a developmental production this August, following a reading at their Festival last year.  What do you hope to learn from this process?
Often the most important stuff you learn is stuff you didn’t anticipate, so it’s hard to say. We’ll experience working with a bunch of new people. The band, with the exception of our MD Matt Webb, will be local musicians. There will be three new cast members, two of whom we haven’t met yet (also local performers) and the great Carrie Manolakos as Lizzie. We have a new director, Kent Nicholson, and we’re already enjoying working closely with him on preliminaries. We’re also really excited that the amazing Carrie Cimma, who was in our 2009 production and the presentation at NAMT, is returning as Bridget. We’ll be paying close attention to a lot of logistical things, such as sound design—as a bona fide rock-opera, the show places specific demands on sound.

For more information, please visit www.villagetheatre.org 

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Portland was just a warm-up for the next few days in Seattle and Issaquah for the Village Theatre’s Festival of New Musicals. But before Issaquah, there was an exciting pit stop to spend a night in the W hotel in Seattle,our home for the Spring 2012 Conference. Adam has chosen very well and the hotel was amazing. I can’t wait for the conference (and that hotel!). Look at the photo of the lobby to the right…beautiful and comfortable!
This was my 2nd time at the Village Festival, the first being for the 2009 New Works Summit, and they never disappoint. Under the leadership of Steve Tomkins and Robb Hunt, the Village is one of the leaders in new musical development. This year, their Festival felt very “NAMT” all around. They presented staged readings of:
The Giver and Lizzie Borden from our 2010 Festival, Hello! My Baby by two Festival Alumnae (Georgia Stitt and Cheri Steinkellner), Sundays at Tiffany’s with book and lyrics by Festival Alumna Susan DiLallo, and Trails. They also presented a breathtakingly beautiful production ofCloaked by Danny Larsen and Michelle Elliott, who also wrote The Yellow Wood from our 2008 Festival. The whole Festival was fantastic and it was amazing to see so many of our alumni all in one beautiful place! Also at the Festival were Greg Schaffert from 321 Theatrical Management, Laura Little from Coeur d’Alene Summer Theatre, and David Ira Goldstein from Arizona Theatre Company, who did a great job directing The Giver.
It was a perfect NAMT trip filled with new musicals and our amazing alumni and members. This is why we should all travel around to see each other’s work…you expand your horizons, get to see a different part of the country, and be inspired!

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