ANMT's 15 Minute Musical Series Set for 6/24-25
By: Tyler Peterson Jun. 19, 2013
Once a year, every June, like clockwork, you can hear composers weeping in North Hollywood, and threatening to call attorneys, and then kissing and making up and saying they've just had the most wonderful experience of their lives. Yes, it's time for the annual 15-Minute Musical project at the Academy for New Musical Theatre: June 24th and 25th at the Met Theatre in Hollywood. For the final project of Academy's famous writers' workshop, composers and lyricists and bookwriters are put together on writing teams and are given eight short weeks to write, revise and polish a brand-new musical written for five actors whom they've never met before.
"It's like a rite of passage," says Elise Dewsberry, the Academy's Artistic Director and producer of the 15 Minute Musicals. "We design the process to imitate a full-length show in a professional theatre: draft, rehearsal, rewrites, rehearsal, opening. It's really a wonderful experience, but it's often stressful, just like a million dollar opening night. Our writers' names are in the program, and it's important to them they write the best show they possibly can, in the short amount of time we've given them."Comments
Videos