Betsy King Militello has been tapped as exec director of Gotham’s National Alliance for Musical Theater, succeeding Kathy Evans.
A former management consultant, Militello recently served as veep of development at Outward Bound. She also has had nonprofit admin positions at Hunter College and the Big Apple Circus. Her legit production experience includes stage management and lighting gigs in pro and amateur troupes.
Given some of the things Jon Stewart has said about Republicans on “The Daily Show,” don’t expect his former longtime head writer David Javerbaum to be gentle on the target of his stage musical that will be presented at a coming New York festival: James G. Watt, the Secretary of the Interior in the Reagan administration.
Mr. Watt is perhaps best known for causing a furor when in an attempt at light-heartedness in 1983 amid the affirmative action wars he said of a five-person panel: “I have a black, I have a woman, two Jews and a cripple.” He resigned a few weeks later, partly over the remark.
Mr. Javerbaum, who was a writer and producer on “The Daily Show” for 11 years until last summer, and who shared a Tony Award nomination with Adam Schlesinger for best score for “Cry-Baby” in 2008, has also written the book and lyrics for the rock musical “Watt?!?” about the life and times of Mr. Watt. The composer and pianist Brendan Milburn wrote the music.
It’s always incredibly sad when a NAMT member theatre closes. Since I started this job shortly before the beginning of the recession, I’ve unfortunately seen several members close their doors. What’s striking is how often the reasons for one theatre going under are completely different from another, and how often they’re unique to that one organization and its circumstances. It’s easy to blame “the economy,” but it can be so much more complicated that.
Our friend Jason Loewith at National New Play Network wrote an excellent testimonial to his friends and ours at FloridaStage, discussing the wonderful impact they had on artists and their community, and also the unusual set of circumstances that led to their sudden closure. I encourage you to read it. (Jason later refined this post for NNPN’s newsletter, so this version is sort of a rough draft, but it’s too long to reprint in this space and this is the only version that’s linkable.)
We like to focus on good news, and fortunately NAMT members have no shortage of that. But it’s important to note the losses too, and see what lessons we can learn from them to strengthen our own organizations. It also drives home the importance of us coming together as a community at NAMT events and elsewhere, to share ideas and help each other in this ever-challenging business.
Today we launch the application for the next round of Writer’s Residency Grants. These grants help supplement member theatres’ musical development with a little bit of cash to bring the writers along for the ride. We believe it is vital that the writers are part of as much of the process as possible when developing a new work. The grants are flexible and the application is short. We want to give out these $1,000 grants to theatres that have exciting new readings, workshops or productions to help ensure that they can incorporate the writers into the process. This money could be used in a whole host of ways for shows at any stage of development, whether the work is being done at the theatre or elsewhere.
This round’s information and application can be found here. I hope that many of our members will apply as we continue to strive to support all of your important work toward creating our next great new musicals. We gave out 7 grants to great projects last year and want to continue the trend this year! If you have any questions, please let me know at branden@namt.org.
I have come to the end of a fantastic 9 years as Executive Director of NAMT. I left corporate America to work with talented and smart people like you, and I am so happy to have gotten to know so many of you personally. I still pinch myself that I get to do my job in something I love as much as musical theatre. Doesn’t it feel like an exciting time? Between the very entertaining Tony’s,Glee, and TV’s singing and dancing contests, there is a beautiful vortex of activity circling this art form we all love.
I feel like those Tony winners who don’t have enough time to thank everyone… there isn’t enough space here to thank everyone who has helped make my time here so inspiring. However, I must thank all the Presidents under whom I worked, in chronological order — Sue Frost, Michael Jenkins, John Breckenridge, Denny Reagan, and Marilynn Sheldon. Without their leadership, we wouldn’t be this strong and have so many exciting new programs like the National Fund for New Musicals today. By the way, I’m consulting for NAMT until the new Executive Director is here, and I am on NAMT’s Board, so I am not going far!
Please stay in touch with me in my new incarnation as Founder of the Rhinebeck Writers Retreat. I will be giving writers working residencies in upstate New York inthe summer and will be back in New York City in the fall. The best way to reach me is: RhinebeckWriters@gmail.com. I will miss you all beyond words. Thank you for everything you have done for me and for NAMT.
Every year, I scour the Internet and the country for exciting songwriters to present in the Songwriters Showcase during the Festival. I try to compile as many choices as possible and then work with the Festival Committee co-chairs to select the most dynamic group of songs and songwriters to complement that year’s Festival. This year, I’m opening up the submission process to all of you.
I’m looking for songs from complete (or almost complete) new musicals that have not been heard much in New York. Send me the full show demo (not just one or two songs) along with a long-form synopsis and production history to NAMT, 520 8th Ave, #301, NY, NY 10018. Feel free to tell your talented friends too!
We want interesting, innovative and diverse songs for the showcase and I know that amongst our alumni and members we can put together the best showcase yet!
One of our lesser-known member benefits is the Discounts and Deals page on namt.org (member login required). We’ve partnered with several vendors to bring NAMT members some special offers that we hope you’ll find useful – and will save you some money! Currently available are discounts at the Empire Hotel near Lincoln Center, 10% off cast albums at Sh-K-Boom/Ghostlight Records (including Catch Me If You Can and The Book of Mormon!), special rates at several NYC rehearsal studios, a 60-day free trial on BofoBox.com, and a free membership to CultureMatchup.com. In the next few weeks we’ll be adding a discount to the National Arts Marketing Project conference, and an offer on PCI insurance from Compliance for Business.
Let me know if there’s anything else you’d like to see here, or if you can put me in touch with anyone who might be able to offer similar services to your fellow members (airlines, or hotels or studio space in other cities would be great!).
We want you to get the most out of your membership, so visit the website for a full list of member benefits. Email website@namt.org if you don’t have or don’t know your login.
As we prepare to head to San Francisco for our Spring Conference, my head is immersed in our five-year strategic plan. The Board and staff have been working together over the past eight months to create a valuable framework to help the National Alliance for Musical Theatre grow. The Board will be discussing the final version at our board meeting next week, and our President Marilynn Sheldon will share some of the highlights with conference attendees.
I have been struck, during this process, by how far NAMT has come. In the past five years, our membership has grown from 130 to 150 organizations; we launched a new website with many more features; and our conferences, Festival of New Musicals, and New Works Summits have helped spawn myriad new musicals across the country. I am particularly proud of the National Fund for New Musicals, which has awarded 31 grants totaling nearly $150,000 to support producers and writers in new work development. There is much more we plan to do for our membership with new granting programs. We’ll have to use some of the fundraising ideas we learn at the conference to help NAMT grow! Details to come…stay tuned!
Kathy Evans
Executive Director
I had the privilege a couple weeks ago to speak to a group of donors from Zach Theatre who were in NYC on a theatre trip. My charge was to not only tell the donors about NAMT and our Festival but to also excite them about developing new musicals. As many of you can guess, this is a joy for me to do and topics I can discuss for hours. Elisbeth Challener from Zach asked me to advise the group on simple ways they can get started with new musical development. My answer was quite simple: bring in a writing team for a residency. To have devoted time away from life in a room with a piano is always sought after by our writers. It is how theatres can start to build relationships with writers and vice versa. It is not even that pricey. Plane tickets, hotel rooms, a stipend for the writers and maybe a rental car are the only real expenses. If you ask nicely, I bet the writers would even play some of the songs they worked on at a cocktail party for donors at the end of week. It is also a great way energize the winter doldrums!
I’m a big fan of having writers in residence as part of the development process, which is why we have the Writers Residency Grants. The next round is not until September but I wanted to plant the seed now. Do you have access to space, a piano and want to help develop a new musical? If so, I know a couple hundred writers you should meet!
So was this transition to directing a long-held artistic desire that Mr. Pierce has waited years to fulfill? “No,” he said unequivocally in a telephone interview on Wednesday. “Exactly the opposite. People have told me for many years that I should direct. Even back when I was doing ‘Frasier,’ the camera people on ‘Frasier’ would say, ‘Oh, you should really direct.’ And I’ve never wanted to until now.”
What made the difference, Mr. Pierce said, was the musical itself, which features a book and lyrics by Brian Hargrove and music by Barbara Anselmi, and which he said he had been a fan of in various incarnations. (“It Shoulda Been You” made its New York City debut in 2009 at the National Alliance for Musical Theatre’s Festival of New Musicals.)
Mr. Pierce said he also responded to the musical’s philosophy on parenthood, which, he said, “is similar to what I’ve come to learn about directing, that you hope for the best and you embrace the unexpected, and ultimately you let people find their own way.”
After a long year of work, the Board of Directors approved a five-year strategic plan in March. The process was thorough and incorporated valuable input from many stakeholders, including the membership. 50% of you completed a survey last fall — a remarkable result. I was particularly pleased to see that 90% rated NAMT membership as having either High Value or Very High Value– a wonderful stamp of approval for the impact of this organization.
The strategic plan has 3 Key Goals, incorporating the stakeholders’ belief that NAMT become a primary resource for best practices among musical theatre producers; make a bold commitment to growing our funding programs; and evaluate and strengthen our programs in ways that assure even greater impact. This plan will serve as the roadmap for our future, starting with the search for the new Executive Director. We are happy to share the plan with all of you. A summary will be mailed to all the members in the coming weeks, and you can review it online now at namt.org/plan. We remain committed to our mission, our membership, and this art form that we all love.
Kathy Evans
Executive Director
I just got back from two weekends of catching great Festival shows. First I was in Seattle to catch Vanities a new musical (Fest ’06) at The 5th Avenue and Iron Curtain (Fest ’09) at The Village Theatre. Then this past weekend I swung down to see Liberty Smith (Fest ’00) at Ford’s Theatre in Washington, DC. All three productions were fantastic, inspiring and very worthy of future productions.
The Festival is just the first step in the process of getting great new musicals out into the field. The next steps rely on theatres seeing each other’s work, sharing work and spreading great musicals around the country. I know the economy is still rough but when you set your next budget, try to find money to include some travel for your key staff to see other work around the NAMT membership and maybe even find a little more to help host a NAMT member at your theatre during your next great project. No one wants a new musical to only have one production, and that can change with you taking one quick trip to a fellow NAMT member to see their great work!
The National Alliance for Musical Theater has handed out 15 grants from the org’s National Fund for New Musicals, disbursing coin tallying $62,000 to legit troupes including Gotham’s Public Theater and L.A.’s Center Theater Group.
The massive South by Southwest Interactive conference just wrapped up in Austin, and thanks to the Internet I was able to follow along a little bit from here. A handful of arts and other non-profit people ventured into these deeply techy waters, and I hope more of us get to go in the future. It’s not (just) about gadgets and toys; increasingly, technology is dictating how we engage our customers, both to get them in the door and provide them with service. For us, working in an art form that’s all about live human interaction, this can seem counter-intuitive, but the beauty of all this technology is how we can engage with people outside of the theatre. People at SXSW were talking about customer behavior, the customer experience, and paying attention to how people behave vs. what they say they want. A lot of this is social media, but there are bigger things coming down the pike, like new ways to pay for tickets, new ways to provide discounts, and new ways your audiences will want to communicate with you.
It’s hard to know what trends will stick, which ones are worth spending our limited resources on, which is exactly why conferences like this are important, so that we know what’s out there and what people are buzzing about. We can follow the leads of deeper-pocketed corporations or charities…but not too far behind.
The NAMT conference is much smaller than SXSW, of course, but we’ll be experimenting next month with letting people engage online as well. Follow @NAMTevents or search #namtsc11 on Twitter, or follow along at namt.org/twitter even if you don’t have an account.
Thank you to everyone who submitted shows to this year’s Festival…160 scripts were sent in for review! Many people ask me: What happens next? Well it is a simple process to explain but a long and hard process to carry out.
Shows submitted to the Festival are sent on to the Festival Committee, a group of 13 brilliant and brave NAMT members who will each read and evaluate 25 or so shows between now and late April. The shows are all “blind,” meaning the Committee knows nothing (no authors’ names or production history) but the art in front of them. I send each show on to committee members who are most likely to love the show and advocate for it.
Then, we meet in late April in NYC and discuss all of the shows. Our goal for that meeting is to leave with a list of the 20 best, most diverse, exciting, fresh new musicals we can find that represents the breadth of work happening out there but also moves the art form forward. Then we repeat the process with the Top 20…but this time every show is read by every committee member.
By mid-June we will have taken 160 shows, divided them by 20 and gotten the 8 shows we will present at the Festival in October. It is a big task, a daunting task…but anyone on the Committee will tell you: it is a whole lot of fun!
Have you heard of the controversy surrounding Rocco Landesman’s remarks at last week’s new play convening at Arena Stage? To simplify, Rocco questions the increase in arts institutions in the last 20 years, when audience participation in the arts has decreased, begging the question — Is there too much supply and not enough demand? You can read his blog post and comment as well on the NEA’s site.
The NAMT Board is about to embark on our strategic plan retreat. One of the key questions raised by our members in the survey you completed in December mirrors the issues addressed by Rocco: audiences. How can we keep current audiences and attract new audiences to the theatre? What innovative methods can we find, as a field, to bring audiences to musicals? What role does new work play? These are big questions. I am excited to tackle these issues with our dedicated board members. Our goal is to have the final plan approved by the Board for our Spring Conference in San Francisco, to present to the membership. NAMT is in a strong position today, as an organization, and we look forward to great things to come.
Kathy Evans
Executive Director
Every January and February changes the topography of the NAMT office in a wonderful way. Piles of CDs and scripts start appearing on once empty flat surfaces and binder clips become scarce. It is submissions time for our 23rd Annual Festival of New Musicals. The non-member deadline passed earlier this week and I am excited to give the members and alumni an extra 3 weeks to find those perfect shows to submit this year (your deadline is on February 15, postmarked). As the Festival has grown in my 3 years here, it has become clear that we really need to present the best, most eclectic, exciting 8 works we can find and I look to you, our members and alumni, as the primary source for our great musicals. Don’t be afraid that something is too edgy, or too wholesome, or too big, or too small for the Festival. Is it great? Does it excite you? Does it make you love being in the theatre? Then submit it because odds are you are not alone in your opinions! Let’s share our great work with the each other and the world this October!
I’m a bit of an internet addict, and I’m a big fan of Facebook and Twitter in my personal life. But I’ve yet to be convinced that social media is effective as a marketing tool, since your audience there is self-selected: you’re not reaching anyone who doesn’t already know you. I also enjoy my time in the theatre as a time to turn off my addictive devices. So I’m fascinated by the SF Playhouse Pluggers program. The Playhouse invites select patrons to tweet during the show. They sit in the back row so as not to disturb others, and the Playhouse doesn’t censor them in any way. So the theatre gets the word out to everyone who follows their “pluggers,” inviting new people into the shared experience happening in the room. They also get some “cred” for not being afraid of criticism. You follow someone on Twitter because you’re interested in what he has to say, so if he’s writing about a show, his interest might get you to check it out yourself…offline.
We’d love to hear from members who have had success with innovative campaigns like this. Or let us know if you try this idea out!
Do you like to give your opinion? Do you like pocket money? Would you like to help NAMT support the development of new musicals? Now you can do ALL THREE! Last week we told you about our new relationship with Op4G, and I wanted to mention it again because I am so excited about its potential to help you and NAMT. In my long career of hearing businesses tout “win-win” scenarios, I believe this truly is! Op4G is a market research company partnering with not-for-profits to find a select demographic base for their corporate clients. If you join, you get paid for giving your opinion on surveys and a portion of your payment is donated to NAMT. It’s easy to join. Go to www.Op4G.com and click on the orange “Join Op4g” button. When asked to “select your non-profit”, select National Alliance for Musical Theatre. Indicate how much of your payment you want to donate to NAMT – between 25% and 100%.
Please spread the word by sharing this link. If we can get lots of people to join Op4G and choose NAMT as their not-for-profit, we could create a donation income stream to help writers and producers that will last for years.
As theatre people, we tend to not venture far from home and see each other’s work. We pour so much time into our jobs and craft that it can seem daunting to go see someone else’s show when all you can think about is your own. But there is something vital about seeing other work.
This is why NAMT holds New Works Summits all around the country; to get us out and seeing new works at member theatres and sharing the experience with our colleagues.
The Summits are truly special events. Small and intimate, you actually find time to say “hi” and to have conversations with everyone. Together we get to enjoy a weekend filled with shows and other events as peers. There is something invigorating about seeing a musical with fellow producers and writers who you can turn to afterwards and spark up a discussion then and there, not over the internet.
I hope that many of you will join us January 14-16 at Goodspeed Musicals in CT for the next New Works Summit. Let’s experience these new musicals together!
The National Alliance for Musical Theatre (NAMT) announced that the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation has granted $25,000 to support NAMT’s next strategic plan. In addition to the Doris Duke grant, NAMT also received funding from Kenneth and Marleen Alhadeff Charitable Foundation ($10,000) and Stacey Mindich Productions ($5,000). The National Alliance for Musical Theatre, whose mission is to help producers and writers in the creation, development, and production of new musicals, will build on the success of the last plan, which resulted in the launch of the National Fund for New Musicals in 2009. The Fund has already awarded 17 grants to not-for-profit theatres across the country.
NAMT Executive Director Kathy Evans said, “We are incredibly honored to receive a grant for the first time from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation. Their generosity is instrumental in providing our Board and membership the unique opportunity to assess our organization, as we celebrate the 25th anniversary of the founding of NAMT. We plan to discover and implement concrete ways that we can build on the success of our Festival of New Musicals, National Fund for New Musicals, and other programs that support producers and writers.”
These industry insiders gathered at TheatreWorks’ rehearsal halls on Friday to discuss the process of producing a musical on the West Coast and to learn the TheatreWorks model for developing and nurturing new works from infancy to main stage premieres. Additionally, they explored the role creative producers play in bringing a new musical to the stage in a discussion lead by Greg Schaffert of 321 Theatrical Management and Tony Award-winning playwright David Henry Hwang about their efforts on Great Wall, one of the musicals in development at TheatreWorks’ New Works Festival. Additionally, artists, producers, and theater representatives had the opportunity to mix, mingle, and network at a wine reception Friday evening.
By George L. Tibbetts Jr.
Bob Martin, The Drowsy Chaperone and The National Alliance of Musical Theatre (NAMT)
The Drowsy Chaperone’s origins are the makings of modern musical legend. It all started when Second City, (Toronto based sketch comedy and improv company) performers Bob Martin and Janet Van De Graaff fell in love, got engaged and asked their songwriter friend Lisa Lambert to be a best man at their wedding. Instead of the traditional stripper-laden bachelor party Lampert enlisted Don McKellar, Greg Morrison and a team of theatrically-minded colleagues to create and perform a 40-minute original musical called The Drowsy Chaperone and named the lead characters ‘Bob Martin’ and ‘Janet Van De Graaff’ (the show’s bride and groom). After the presentation, Bob joined his cast of friends on stage and, now famously, quipped: “What a wonderful show. I have some notes.” Those notes would be the beginnings of the “Man in Chair,” the character who sets the framework for, The Drowsy Chaperone.
With no source material for their story-within-a-story to provide a template for them, except for the early Marx Brothers or Fred and Ginger movies that they loved, the four writers developed their totally original “musical within a comedy” at the Toronto Fringe Festival. It was an instant hit. When New York producer Roy Miller saw it, he immediately secured the rights. However, when he tried to share the script with his colleagues, no one would read it because of the title. So, Miller decided to present a staged reading in New York at NAMT (National Alliance for Musical Theatre).
The National Alliance for Musical Theatre, is a national organization dedicated to advancing musical theatre by nurturing the creation, development, production and presentation of new musicals. The Ogunquit Playhouse is among the 150 members that include some of the leading producers of musical theatre throughout 34 states and abroad. Once a year, these industry leaders come together in New York to shape the future of musical theatre – part of this process is the Festival of New Musicals. Among the many musicals launched by the annual Festival are Thoroughly Modern Millie, Children of Eden, Honk!, Songs for a New World, I Love You Because, Vanities and of course, The Drowsy Chaperone.
Miller invited Kevin McCollum and other colleagues to the NAMT Festival of New Musicals to witness Bob Martin’s show. It sold them! Later that night Miller and McCollum were having dinner with Martin, Don McKellar, Greg Morrison and Lisa Lambert to talk about the hilarious show with the terrible title. For the next several months, they searched for a directors. McCollum suggested Casey Nicholaw, whom he had worked with before and who was busy choreographing Spamalot. Once Spamalot opened on Broadway, Nicholaw joined the team with a completely fresh and newly energized take on the show.
The material was really entertaining, said Nicholaw. But we all realized it was about fleshing out the show-within-a-show a little bit more. We knew that Man In Chair’s material was strong, but we needed to work out the numbers and make the show dance more…We wanted the show to seem less like a sketch and more like a full-blown musical – to bring to Broadway.
The show opened on Broadway on 1 May, 2006 at the Marquis Theatre and went on to win the most Tony Awards of any musical that year!
According to McCollum, “A musical should start on the earth and end in the heavens.” With The Drowsy Chaperone, it does exactly that. A show that began as a celebration of love, that in turn celebrates the love of musical theatre – it’s no surprise that audiences are laughing, cheering and, in the end, being moved as well.
From TheValleyVoice.org [site no longer in operation]
At 10:30 tomorrow morning, on the rooftop of the Wyly, Dallas Theater Center artistic director Kevin Moriarty will announce to the assembled press the 2010-2011 season lineup. But — twist! — word of a 2011-2012 season offering was announced today … by the National Alliance for Musical Theatre in New York City. NAMT sent out a press release announcing eight awards from its National Fund for New Musicals, and named the DTC among them.
A new Michael John LaChiusa musical co-produced by Off Broadway’s Public Theater and two other shows in the works with Gotham troupes are among the recipients of eight grants from the National Alliance for Musical Theater.
In the org’s second year of doling out coin from its National Fund for New Musicals, grants will total $50,000 toward the development of new legit tuners at non-profit theaters that are members of NAMT.
