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Dateline: 30th August, 2006
New Musicals for Cardiff The six new musicals to be showcased at the Chapter Arts Centre in Cardiff from 3rd to 5th November 2006 as part of the Cardiff International Festival of Musical Theatre have been announced. The Global Search for New Musicals, which aims to present the best in new musical theatre writing from around the world, is a key element of the Festival. The six new musicals are:
Over 300 entries were submitted from all over the world - from Australia to Austria, Scotland to Singapore, and Wales to Japan. The high standard of entries made the task of selecting the final six musicals to be showcased a difficult one for the panel of six professional judges, including some of the leading voices in the theatre industry: Julia McKenzie, Billy Rosenfield, Donna Soto-Morettini, Chris Grady, Caroline Underwood, Susie McKenna and Sally Rapier. The new shows, chosen through an anonymous, three-stage selection process, will be staged in one of two different programmes, each programme containing three showcases of 45 minutes each. The programmes will be open to both producers and the general public. About Face is a musical that is suggested by Much Ado About Nothing. David Arthur, who has written the book and lyrics, is a long standing member of the Lehman Engel BMI Workshop, New York City, and the recipient of the 2003 Jerry Harrington Award. Jeffrey Lodin, the first composer to have two musicals chosen to be presented in the Global Search was awarded a 2004 Meet the Composer Grant by the New England Foundation for the Arts. Jeffrey wrote the music for A Hundred Years into the Heart which won 7 `Spirit' Awards, including best production and best score and is currently optioned for Off-Broadway, Spring Of `07, The Fabulist is an epic fable of Aesop based on the novel by John Vornholt. Composer/Lyricist David Spencer is a winner of the 2000 Kleban Award for Excellence in Theatre Lyrics and worked with composer Alan Menken for the musical Weird Romance. Librettist Stephen Witkin was the librettist for the Off Broadway hit Prom Queens Unchained. Like You Like It is a musical that is suggested by Shakespeare's As You Like It. Daniel S. Aquisto who wrote the music and Sammy Buck who has written the book and lyrics, are the 2004 winners of the National Musical Theatre Network and The Theatre for American Musicals' inaugural New Voices Prize for Like You Like It. Kind Hearts and Coronets is based on the classic film. Robert Freedman, lyricist and librettist, was the writer and producer of ABC's Life with Judy Garland and composer Jule Styne chose Robert to write the PBS special on his work, which starred Carol Channing and Chita Rivera. The composer Steven Lutvak was named Artist in Residence at the Eugene O'Neil Opera Music/Theater Conference. His musical Almost September won eight Bay Area's Critic's Circle Awards and has been awarded the first Johnny Mercer Foundation Emerging songwriter award, two Jonathan Larson Performing Arts Grants, and three MAC awards. Casanova Returns looks at Casanova's life as he returns from Venice at the age of fifty three. Mike Reid, the composer, is a Grammy Award-winning songwriter with more than thirty top ten pop and country hits recorded by many artists including Joe Cocker, Kenny Rogers and Bette Midler. The lyricist Sarah Schlesinger wrote the lyrics for the musical Ballad of Little Jo which ran at the Bridewell Theatre in 2003. She is the recipient of the Kleban Award for Best Lyricist, the Richard Rogers Award and a Gilman-Gonzalez Falla Theatre Foundation Award. Top of the Heap charts a friendship tested by the darker aspects of show business in the 1950s and is written in the heightened style of a fifties television drama. William Squier won an Emmy Award for writing WKYC-TV's Unusual Phenomenon. He has been awarded a 2003 Connecticut Artist Fellowship, the Coleman A. Jennings Award, the Jackie White Memorial Award and the 11th Annual National Children's Festival's new script award. Please note that all three Archive indices are very long and will therefore take some time to download.
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