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New Work in Progress: Distant Thunder

Next, we chatted with Michael Baron, the Producing Artistic Director at NAMT member Lyric Theatre of Oklahoma. The company is about to open the world premiere of Distant Thunder by Lynne Taylor-Corbett, Shaun Taylor-Corbett and Chris Wiseman. Lyric Theatre has received a grant for this production from the Frank Young Fund for New Musicals.
Darrell Waters, a successful young attorney, returns to his childhood home in Montana to broker a deal that can benefit the impoverished Blackfeet Nation. He soon faces his reclusive father about their painful past and grapples with the paradigm of what it means to be Native American in the United States. Cultures collide and unite through music, dance, stories and faith as we witness the dawning of a Distant Thunder.

What is Lyric Theatre of Oklahoma’s history with new works, and how does this new production of Distant Thunder fit into your overall commitment to new works development?
Lyric began our New Works Initiative in 2014 with a production of Triangle (NAMT Fest ’12) by Tom Mizer and Curtis Moore. Our audiences still talk about that show and the excitement of having a new work given a full production here in Oklahoma. I felt it was important that Lyric not only produce new productions of musicals from the canon but that we contribute to it as well. The value of having composers in residence working on their material and having a full production outside of the critical eye of New York has been thrilling to the artists and our audiences alike. Subsequent new musical premiere highlights have included Adam Gwon and Julia Jordan’s Bernice Bobs Her Hair (NAMT Fest ’11), Doug Cohen and Dan Elish’s Mann…and Wife (now titled The Evolution of Mann), and Alana Jacoby and Scotty Arnold’s When We’re Gone (fka Mortality Play, NAMT Fest ’16). Since Oklahoma is home to 39 nations, Lyric is a perfect theatre to premiere Distant Thunder. Lyric will be able to nurture and develop the production in an arena of artistic safety and in a geographic area that embraces multiple tribes.

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2019-2020 Frank Young Fund for New Musicals and Innovation & Exploration Fund Grants Announced

We are thrilled to announce 11 awards granted from the Frank Young Fund for New Musicals (formerly known as the National Fund for New Musicals), and six awards granted from the Innovation & Exploration Fund. Now in its 11th year, this year the Frank Young Fund for New Musicals (FYFNM) is providing grants totaling $70,000 to organizations across the country. The Innovation & Exploration Fund (I&EF) is providing grants totaling $12,000 to organizations nationwide.
NAMT Executive Director Betsy King Militello stated: “We are honored and excited to support our member theatres both as they work to develop innovative and provocative new musicals, and as they explore ideas to create new best practices in the field. With these grants, we have now awarded 162 grants totaling $563,000 to NAMT members across the country. These projects will join a growing list of important new musicals and initiatives supported by NAMT’s granting programs.”

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Festival Show Update: When We're Gone

This month, we caught up with Scotty Arnold and Alana Jacoby, the writers of 2016 Festival show When We’re Gone (fka Mortality Play), to check in with them before the show’s world premiere at NAMT member Lyric Theatre of Oklahoma this fall. The production is funded in part by a grant from the National Fund for New Musicals. You can also check out a video fo Scotty and Alana talking about what they love about NAMT on YouTube!

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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 $25 million in grants to fund artistic projects and research, with just over $3 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 $60,000 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
Dallas Theater Center
Diversionary Theatre
Goodspeed Musicals
Horizon Theatre Company
The Lark
Lyric Theatre of Oklahoma
MCC Theater
NAMT
The Old Globe
Playwrights Horizons
Prospect Theater Company
The Public Theater
TheatreWorks Silicon Valley
Village Theatre
ZACH Theatre
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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2017-2018 National Fund for New Musicals Grants Announced

We are thrilled to announce 16 awards granted from their 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 ninth year, the Fund will provide grants totaling $53,000 to 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 104 grants totaling $411,500. 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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Members in the News

NAMT in the News

NEA Awards Grants to NAMT and Our Members

The National Endowment for the Arts has recently announced that it will award over $30 million in grants to fund artistic projects and research, with $3,505,000 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:
The 5th Avenue Theatre
Ars Nova
Atlantic Theater Company
The Lark
Lyric Theatre of Oklahoma
The Old Globe
Playwrights Horizons
Portland Center Stage
TheatreWorks Silicon Valley
Village Theatre
ZACH Theatre
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. Watch the NEA’s video above to learn more about their impact on the arts in America.

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With New Works Initiative, Oklahoma City's Lyric Theatre puts focus to staging new musicals

Lyric Theatre of Oklahoma‘s New Works Initiative was developed to allow the theatre to commit to producing world premiere musicals. Through this program, Lyric supports the future of musical theatre, and is helping make Oklahoma a home for new musical development. NewsOK took a look into Lyric’s newest premiere, Mann…And Wife, to explore the evolution of the New Works Initiative and Artistic Director Michael Baron’s vision for the program.

The modern dating comedy “Mann … And Wife” marks the third world premiere production in three seasons for Lyric, after the 2014 musical mystery/romance “Triangle” [NAMT Fest 2012] and last year’s period piece “Bernice Bobs Her Hair” [NAMT Fest 2011]. Continuing through Feb. 21 at Lyric’s cozy Plaza District theater, the romantic comedy is part of the New Works Initiative Baron has championed at the more than 50-year-old company.
“I feel as a not-for-profit and a vibrant arts institution we should be adding to the canon of musical theater and that other places should be doing musicals that premiere here in Oklahoma. And that’s already beginning to happen,” Baron said in an interview.
“Some theaters have large reading series, some of them do lots of workshops, and I feel like the best use of our space and time is to actually do either the first kind of development production or the actual world premiere on its feet. Because there’s lots of new musicals and rarely do they get to get on their feet with costumes and all that. … And for us, it’s almost just as expensive to bring out the entire group for a workshop, so we might as well put it on the stage and do a full production.”

Read more at NewsOK.com.
Photo: From left, Mateja Govich, Zachary Prince and Liz Shivener rehearse a scene from Lyric Theatre’s new musical “Mann … and Wife” at Lyric at the Plaza, 1727 NW 16th St., in Oklahoma City, Friday, Jan. 22, 2016. Photo by Nate Billings, The Oklahoman.

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Festival Shows in the News

Members in the News

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Watch Highlights of Lyric Theatre of Oklahoma's Bernice Bobs Her Hair

BroadwayWorld.com has shared video of the world premiere production of 2011 Festival show Bernice Bobs Her Hair at NAMT member Lyric Theatre of Oklahoma.

Lyric Theatre of Oklahoma continues its new works initiative this fall with BERNICE BOBS HER HAIR, a world premiere musical that will take its first bows at Lyric’s Plaza Theatre. The show, written by the lauded pair of Adam Gwon and Julia Jordan, runs October 7 through 25. Based on the F. Scott Fitzgerald short story of the same name, the show tells the story of 18 year old Bernice Harvey’s journey from socially awkward to the belle of the country club- and back again.

Read the whole article at BroadwayWorld.com.

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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!

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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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National Fund for New Musicals recipients announced!

We are honored to announce this year’s recipients of our National Fund for New Musicals grants. Now in its fifth year, the National Fund has distributed 56 grants totaling $234,000 to non-profit member theatres around America.
A special thanks to our funders including Stacey Mindich Productions, The Alhadeff Family Charitable Foundation and The ASCAP Foundation. This fund would not be possible without their contributions. If you are interested in supporting theatres developing new musicals around the country, please consider making a contribution to our National Fund for New Musicals.

National Fund grants of $10,000 to support full productions have been awarded to:
Barrington Stage Company (Pittsfield, MA) for Southern Comfort by Dan Collins and Julianne Wick Davis. This project previously received a Project Development Grant in support of its time at CAP21, a Writers Residency Grant for its time at Playwrights Horizons and was presented in NAMT’s 2012 Festival of New Musicals.
Transport Group (New York, NY) for The Memory Show by Sara Cooper and Zachary Redler, with support from Stacey Mindich Productions. The Memory Show was presented in NAMT’s 2009 Festival of New Musicals. 

National Fund grants between $2,500 and $5,000 to support a workshop or reading have been awarded to:
Chicago Shakespeare Theater (Chicago, IL) for Summerland by Laura Eason, Jenny Giering & Sean Barry. Giering is an alumna from NAMT’s 2005 Festival for Princess Caraboo.
Dallas Theater Center (Dallas, TX) for The Fortress of Solitude by Itamar Moses and Michael Friedman, with support from the ASCAP foundation. Itamar Moses is an alumnus from NAMT’s 2012 Festival for Nobody Loves You, which also received a Project Development Grant in 2011-2012 in support of its time at The Old Globe.
Human Race Theatre Company  (Dayton, OH) for The Noteworthy Life of Howard Barnes by Michael Kooman and Christopher Dimond with support from The Alhadeff Family Charitable Foundation. Kooman and Dimond are alumni from NAMT’s 2011 Festival for Dani Girl.
Lyric Theatre of Oklahoma (Oklahoma City, OK) for Triangle by Thomas Mizer and Curtis Moore with support from Stacey Mindich Productions. Triangle was presented in NAMT’s 2012 Festival of New Musicals.

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