Tickets Now On Sale For 15 MINUTE MUSICALS, Plays 6/28-29

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 28th and 29th at the Colony Theatre in Burbank. 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."

This season there will be four 15-minute musicals, featuring the same cast of five actors. The writers have been given a theme of "For Richer, For Poorer," and have cooked up four wildly different approaches to this theme: an outrageous family squabble over a cookie dough recipe; a porn movie with a G-rated director at the helm; Hansel and Gretel all grown up but delusional the Witch is still out to eat 'em; and three exotic plants singing for their lives.

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

The four shows presented each evening (June 28 and 29) are:
Dough!, with book by Sarah Hernandez, music by Clifford J. Tasner, and lyrics by Ron Ovadia.
Shoot Ma!, with book by Joe Moe, music by Ryan Luevano, and lyrics by Richard Hefner
Witch Is It?, with book by Maureen Borillo, music by Matthew Levine, and lyrics by Richard Castle
Green Thumb, with book by Joan Enguita, music by Nancy Gitlin, and lyrics by Joan Enguita and Karrie Vach

The cast for all four musicals is: Sonia Alcazar, Patrick Foley, Barry O'Neil, Emily Kimmel Plotkin, and Gabrielle Wagner. The four musicals are directed by John Sparks, with music direction by Jake Anthony.

Tickets are $25; the performances begin at 7:30pm. For tickets, reservations and more info: www.anmt.org

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