AMTP at Northwestern's 2016-17 Season to Feature Trio of New Musicals

The American Music Theatre Project At Northwestern University presents its 2016-2017 season, featuring new musicals from award-winning writers Adam Gwon, Joshua Salzman and Ryan Cunningham, and Michael Mahler.

AMTP launches the new 2016-2017 season by announcing a new associate artistic director, Jonathan Larson Award-winning lyricist/bookwriter and AKA Creative Director, Ryan Cunningham, and three new musicals: Rockne: There's Something In the Game by Buddy Farmer, Michael Mahler, and David Bell; Michael Collins by Joshua Salzman and Ryan Cunningham; The Proxy Marriage by Adam Gwon and Michele Lowe

Under Artistic Director David Bell, AMTP brings together the nation's leading artists in music theatre to work with Northwestern's faculty, staff and students to nourish and invigorate American music theatre by developing and producing new musicals. Past musicals include Found, Hero, Next Thing You Know, and Edges and previous artists include Andrew Lippa, Benj Pasek and Justin Paul, Michael Friedman, Michael Greif, Sheldon Harnick, Hunter Bell, Claude-Michel Schönberg and Alain Boublil.

ABOUT ROCKNE: THERE'S SOMETHING IN THE GAME

Rockne: There's Something In The Game is a vibrant new musical about one man's journey to discover what is important in life. Born to Norwegian immigrants, Knute Rockne rose to become the greatest coach in the history of college football, turning Notre Dame into an athletic powerhouse. March with the Rockne story down the gridiron of life to come to understand that "there's something in the game." Football...Fame...Family

RockneTheMusical.com

DAVID BELL-LYRICIST

For the last thirty years, David H. Bell's career has spanned a wide range of International and National projects as a director, choreographer, and author. As Artistic Director of the historic Ford's Theatre in Washington, D.C., David inaugurated such World Premiere musicals as Elmer Gantry, A Christmas Carol (adapter), and Hot Mikado (author-winner Helen Hayes Award, Best Director). His work at Chicago Shakespeare Theatre, the Marriott Theatre, and Drury Lane Oakbrook in Chicago has earned him 44 Joseph Jefferson Award nominations (winning the award 11 times). David currently heads the Music Theatre Program at Northwestern University.

MICHAEL MAHLER-COMPOSER

Michael Mahler is the Jeff award-winning Chicago-based composer/lyricist of Diary of a Wimpy Kid, October Sky, Hero, The Man Who Murdered Sherlock Holmes, Wonderland: Alice's Rock & Roll Adventure, Painted Alice, Rockne, How Can You Run with a Shell on Your Back? and others. He contributed additional lyrics to Cameron Mackintosh's Broadway-bound revival of Miss Saigon and served as the original English lyricist of Boublil and Schönberg's La Revolution Francaise. Projects in development include Secret of My Success and Gravediggers' Hamlet. Visit www.michaelmahler.com

BUDDY FARMER-BOOKWRITER

Buddy Farmer has the distinction of being the only playwright to ever play football for Bear Bryant at the University of Alabama. His first play Coaches (Off the Bench with Knute, Vince and The Bear) received critical acclaim in Los Angeles and toured to the University of Notre Dame, San Francisco, Milwaukee, The Super Bowl in Phoenix and The Academy of Television of Arts and Sciences. He rewrote the "Knute" section of this play into a TV mini-series which was the basis for the book he wrote for the new musical, Knute Rockne. The show premiered last year just outside Chicago and received rave reviews from the Chicago theatre critics along with several Jefferson Award nominations. His latest play, The Barbeque, received the runner up award in the 2010 New Works of Merit Playwriting Contest in New York. Another of his plays, Alabama Baggage, was given an Honorable Mention in 2008 by the New Works of Merit. Buddy resides in Los Angeles with his wonderful wife Pamela and their two dogs, Rusty and Savannah.

ABOUT MICHAEL COLLINS

Michael Collins follows the true story of the Irish rebel of the same name. Along with his fellow patriots, he launched a new kind of revolution: one that would eventually bring the British to the negotiating table with the Irish for the first time in history. Through it all, Michael Collins' strength is fortified by a formidable young woman, Kitty Kiernan, as it's his undying love for her that keeps him fighting-even through his very last days.

Joshua Salzman (music) and Ryan Cunningham (book and lyrics) are Jonathan Larson Award winners as well as Drama Desk and MAC Award-nominated writers. Their Off-Broadway musical, I Love You Because, was in the NAMT Festival of New Musicals and has been produced all over the world in five languages. Their musical Next Thing You Know has been produced at CAP21 in New York, across America and in Europe. Their new musical The Legend of New York has been performed in concert at Lincoln Center and Feinstein's/54 Below, and developed at Milliken University, NYU and AMTP at Northwestern. Ryan and Joshua are graduates of the NYU graduate musical theatre writing program and are both members of ASCAP and the Dramatist Guild.

ABOUT THE PROXY MARRIAGE

The Proxy Marriage follows two Montana high school seniors, William and Bridey, who act as stand-ins in proxy weddings-a marriage ceremony that takes place where both parties have stand-ins, commonly used by soldiers stationed overseas. William is an aspiring composer who yearns to escape podunk Montana; Bridey is the popular star of their high school musicals, who dreams of New York. Her father Hank, a local lawyer, performs the proxy weddings as a service to soldiers stationed in Afghanistan and Iraq. As the war escalates, so do the number of weddings, and William and Bridey form an unlikely friendship as they "marry" each other.

The Proxy Marriage traces their increasingly complicated relationship over 15 years as they reunite in Montana to perform these marriage ceremonies. Life pulls them apart and then together again and as the world changes, so do William and Bridey's hopes and dreams-until they finally realize that perhaps what they were longing for all along was each other.

ADAM GWON Off-Broadway: Ordinary Days (Roundabout Theatre), Old Jews Telling Jokes (Westside Theatre); Regional: Cake Off (Signature Theatre, Helen Hayes Award nomination), Cloudlands (South Coast Rep), The Boy Detective Fails (Signature Theatre), Bernice Bobs Her Hair (Lyric Theatre of Oklahoma); West End: Ordinary Days (Trafalgar Studios). Honors include the Kleban, Ebb, Loewe, and Richard Rodgers Awards, Second Stage Theatre's Donna Perret Rosen Award, Weston Playhouse New Musical Award, ASCAP Harold Adamson Award, MAC John Wallowitch Award. Recordings include: Ordinary Days (Ghostlight Records), Audra McDonald's Go Back Home (Nonesuch), The Essential Liz Callaway (Working Girl Records), Over the Moon: The Broadway Lullaby Album.

Michele Lowe Broadway: The Smell of the Kill; Off Broadway: String of Pearls (Primary Stages, Outer Critics nom) 1000 Words Come to Mind (Joe's Pub); Regional: Inana (TimeLine Theatre, Denver Center Theatre), Victoria Musica (Cincinnati PlayHouse in the Park) Map of Heaven (Denver Center Theatre), Mezzulah, 1946 (City Theatre) Backsliding in the Promised Land (Syracuse Stage). Honors: Francesca Primus Award. TV: creator of Clay and Giraffe. Education: Northwestern University Medill School of Journalism. www.michelelowe.net

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