Sam Norman and Eliza Randall have won the 2025-26 MTI Stiles + Drewe mentorship award for their musical Echolocation.
The award was set up in 2016 by musical theatre writing partnership George Stiles and Anthony Drewe along with Mercury Musical Developments, which supports writers to develop their craft and further their careers. It is supported by theatrical licensing agency Musical Theatre International (Europe).
The award is presented biennially to a writer or writing team who have submitted the first full draft of a new musical. A panel of judges including Stiles and Drewe select the winning project. The writers then benefit from bespoke mentorship and support over the following 12 months.
Echolocation is a musical performed in pitch blackness. It is a “teenage love story without a map, a road trip musical in the dark”. Teenage best friends Ethan and Sadie are polar opposites: he’s a street-smart athlete who grew up inches above the poverty line, she’s a blind intellectual who’s sick of her overprotective family. When a DNA test reveals that Ethan’s long-lost father is alive, it’s a chance for him to chase the family he’s never met and for her to escape the parents who never let her go. Echolocation is currently in development.
Stiles and Drewe said, “we’ve been really impressed once again by the breadth and range of entries for this year’s mentorship award and those on our final shortlist were all very strong contenders. However, we’re thrilled to be mentoring Echolocation, a story that presents a truly original experience to its audience as they will perceive the show purely from an auditory perspective, exactly as one of the two lead characters experiences her entire life.
“Sam and Eliza’s show is funny, tuneful, truthful, contemporary and truly original. We’d have been batty to pass up the chance to help it develop over the next year.”
Norman and Randall commented, “as theatre kids who grew up on Betty Blue Eyes and The Wind in the Willows, we’re overjoyed, grateful and a little bit in shock to have been selected for the award. What a gift to learn from such an incredible team about the craft of writing musicals and the mechanics of putting them on.”
Norman is an award-winning librettist and lyricist. He has been a finalist three times for the Stiles and Drew best new song prize. Randall, who hails from Boulder City, Nevada, is a composer, pianist and musical director. She has had various compositions performed off-West End and off-Broadway.