Eight New Fifteen Minute Musicals From New Musicals Inc. To Premiere In Hollywood

Eight brand-new fifteen-minute musicals will have their world premiere on July 18 and 19 at the Broadwater Second Stage in Hollywood. These musicals are a decades-long tradition at New Musicals Inc., and one of the hottest tickets in town.

The 15 Minute Musical Project concludes each season of NMI's world-famous Core Curriculum of the writers' workshop, offered through their academic branch the Academy for New Musical Theatre, which has been in existence for over 40 years. For the final project of the curriculum, composers and lyricists and bookwriters are put together on writing teams and are given three short months to write, revise and polish a brand-new musical written for four 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."

This season there will be eight 15-minute musicals, featuring two different casts of four actors. The evening is entitled: Green-Eyed Monsters: eight new musicals about jealousy, and the writing teams have cooked up eight wildly different approaches to this theme ranging from feuding siblings in a high-wire act to jealous musical divas succombing to magical trickery to a conniving cat and mouse to a pair of gardeners raising rivals flowers - and much more!

These evenings are an annual highlight of NMI's year-long season of developing new musicals and feature many new voices in musical theatre. Every seat in the house usually sells out.

The eight shows presented each evening (July 18 and 19) are split into two groups:

The BLUE Program:

• Granny Wars with book by Kimberly Barger, and music and lyrics by Katie Brady
• Stanford or Bust with book by Michael Harold, and music and lyrics by Jan Wong
• Cheese & Crackers with book by Thomas Blakely, music by Duncan Smith, and lyrics by Bill Coe
• Highwire with book by Gustav Hoyer, music by Joely Zuker, and lyrics by Elizabeth Coleman
• Directed by John Coppola; Music Directed by Jake Anthony; Stage Managed by Jenn Dupre
• Starring Melvin Biteng, Tianna Cohen, Marcello Padilla, and Andrea Somera

The RED Program:

• The Cure with book and lyrics by B.K. Wells, and music by Xavier Vidal
• Greener Gardens with book by Sara Beil, music by Jon Kull, and lyrics by Greg Beattie
• I Heart Jeffrey Braddock with book by Marilyn Haese, music by Ron Barnett, and lyrics by Charlotte Bash
• The Fifth Element with book and lyrics by Wayne Self, and music by Joelle Ferrando
• Directed by Elise Dewsberry; Music Directed by Ron Barnett; Stage Managed by Rachel Shanblatt
• Starring Corinne DeVries, Seth David Mitchell, Giane Morris, and Patrick Steward

Tickets are $25; the performances begin at 7:30pm. For tickets, reservations and more info: http://nmi.org/nmi-summer-events-2019/

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