New Musical TINSELTOWN TIPTOE To Get Los Angles Staged Reading

Producer Christine Russell (Head Over Heels, Beautiful: The Carole King Musical) will present a private staged industry reading of the new musical TINSELTOWN TIPTOE on Friday, May 20th in Los Angeles.

The reading of the new musical will feature direction and choreography by Emmy Award nominee Spencer Liff, book by Nicholas Coster, music and lyrics by Heather Reid, and orchestrations by Tony Award winner Tom Kitt and Grammy Award winner Steve Sidwell.

TINSELTOWN TIPTOE is set in a fictional 1950s Hollywood. The old studio system is in tatters and television is taking over. In 1950 there were 3 million TV owners in the US, by the late 50s that number had swelled to 50 million. Old movie studios saw their profits sink as they struggled to catch up with and capitalize on this new media sensation. Talent, old and new, was repurposed for television. Writers churned out westerns, cop dramas, game shows and comedies, desperately trying to fill the airwaves and attract advertisers. Actors who'd barely made a mark on the silver screen were now a sought after commodity. With the glut of celebrities came the scandal sheets. Tabloid newspapers and magazines fed America's bottomless appetite for gossip; the more lurid and explicit the better. Hollywood, rife with illicit drugs and homosexual sex, was the perfect hunting ground. Careers were ruined and lives lost with the swipe of a pen.

Against this background we meet Dora Gentry and Clifford Stone on the set of Dora's variety television show. Dora is fighting to escape from the man who controls her career, studio head Mason Blackwell. Clifford is a rising star with the world at his feet, as long as the world doesn't discover his secret. Together with their found family they fight to control their own destinies and find true happiness.

The cast of the May 20th reading will include Rena Strober as Dora, Peter Porte as Clifford, Erica Hanrahan as Suzy, Fatima El-Bashir as May, Patrick Michael Ortiz as Mark, Clayton Farris as Keith, Greg North as Mason, Julia Aks as Imogene, and Parissa Helen Koo, Paige Berkovitz, Luis Anduaga, and Michael Thomas Grant in the ensemble.