30 Days of NYMF: COLLEGE, The Musical

By Drew Fornarola & Scott Elmegreen (Book, Music, and Lyrics)

On New Years Day, 2005, we were sitting on the floor of our dorm room, brainstorming ideas for new musicals we wanted to write. We were eating cold pizza out of the box and laughing at the empty cereal bowls, text books, and laundry strewn about the room; we were listening to roommates outwit each other and joke about both the trivialities and the very important aspects of their lives; we were trying to drown out the cell phone calls and television news playing in the background…. For some time, we'd been looking at stories to adapt or historical events to retell, but finally we just looked at each other and the room we were sitting in, and we said "You know what? I think this is it."

We’ve both since graduated, but somehow COLLEGE The Musical is still in session.  The show premiered at Princeton in May 2006, and then went on to a workshop at the University at Buffalo (February ’07), a reading in NYC (May ’07), a workshop at Pace as the winner of the Pace New Musicals Competition (January ’08), and most recently a twice-extended professional premiere at the Hippodrome State Theater in Gainesville (May – July ’08).  Along the way we’ve found extraordinary partners in the theater community who have dedicated themselves to helping us craft and develop our story, characters, and songs, and we are deeply grateful to all of them. 

We are now preparing to bring the show to NYMF, and we couldn’t be more excited!  We have, we believe, one of the very best casts and creative teams in New York, and every day we all find new ways to challenge, think about, ask questions of, and laugh hard at the college experience, and our generation as a whole.  We are thrilled to have this opportunity to bring our show to New York, and we hope that you’ll join us to celebrate COLLEGE!

For more information visit:  www.nymf.org/show-880.html