As musical theatre writers, what do you need?
More resources for workshopping musicals with nontraditional scores. Most musical workshops today assume the score will be piano driven. But a lot of contemporary composers are bringing rhythmic elements that cannot be reproduced with just a piano.
– Alan Alexander III
Financial support for developing original work. If opportunities are only accessible to those who can afford them, you’re going to get a very narrow representation of the amazing work out there. Which leads to...
Affordable union development contracts with Actors’ Equity. Demos and a script are just tools that can communicate words and music, but hearing your work live and breathe in the room is ABSOLUTELY VITAL to the process. Maybe two sets of rates: one for projects with producers attached and another for self-funded writers. So many great writers cannot afford to fund for a 29-hour—and forget about a workshop—if they don’t have a producer attached. And most DON’T.
– Amy Engelhardt
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NSPIRATION! The business landscape for musicals feels really, really rough at the moment. What’s inspiring musical theatre writers these days?
– Adam Gwon
Support for creating demos. The level of demos is getting increasingly sophisticated, but that requires a lot of resources (both time and monetary). How can we create a more even playing field when it comes to demos? How can we support writers in creating demos that reflect their shows?
– Sonya Hayden
We need to creatively expand our avenues of development. Access continues to be limited, so how do we take agency over this? It’s expensive but also vital.
Broadway has proven over and over again that it’s not for everyone (writers and audience) and also the place that will take the least amount of risk on new works/different voices/different perspectives. How can we brainstorm on where else we can tell our stories and find new audiences?
– Christine Toy Johnson
More opportunities for new musicals to get produced. There are many opportunities for beginning ideas and writing retreats, but once you’ve written the show and you’re ready to test drive it, the opportunities disappear.
– Jasmine Joshua
PPut plainly: time and space. Money doesn’t hurt either, but the prevailing trend in theatre seems to be inching toward spending as little as possible on development. What most theatres seem to want now is “finished drafts,” whatever those are. This is not a failure on their part, by the way. New York theatres are increasingly at the mercy of a few corporate sponsors and some very wealthy donors. It is a precarious situation, and I do not envy anyone trying to run an off-Broadway house at this point in time.
– Asher Muldoon
For those of us who do not come from wealth and have come to NYC to pursue the dream of writing musicals, the grind of survival often trumps one’s ability to find devoted time to write. As of now, the paid developmental opportunities and grants for musical theatre writers are too few. When I have been lucky enough to receive financial or institutional support, my work vaults forward by leaps and bounds. We need more of these opportunities by a lot!
– Rona Siddiqui
The landscape has changed commercially in that producers are not taking the kinds of risks on original stories as they once did. The focus in the post-COVID era is on getting audiences into the theatre based on IP [intellectual property] they know and already love. Of course there is still a place for original stories, but the opportunity to get them produced feels like you have to be the luckiest writer on earth to find an adventurous producer who falls so in love with the piece that they are willing to take a huge risk. Having a more direct channel to producers would be invaluable as writers, considering that currently there is so much red tape between us and them, including directors, theatres, agents, etc.
– Benjamin Velez
We need money. The greatest obstacle to writers in navigating the non-profit system is that no matter your CV/quality of your script, your musical won’t get developed or likely not even read unless you can show up with a million dollar enhancement. Writers are being forced to essentially be their own producers, and then get asked to try to survive on $10,000 commission for three to five years to finish a show. It’s a completely broken model.
– Max Vernon
More support and flexibility from organizations, producers, and unions to develop work in non-traditional ways that are not auditory-focused, ie, the standard development model that starts with readings. I’m lucky that the organizations I’m currently working with are being supportive of my work and new approaches, but many Deaf/Disabled artists are being left out because these old models are entrenched in our business. How can we make room for starting with visual elements like set and costume designs, video improv, sign language, and dynamic captions?
– Jay Alan Zimmerman
What obstacles are you navigating?
PRODUCTION COSTS! It has gotten so expensive to put on musicals at any level. In the past year, I’ve had two productions announced (one even cast and staffed), then canceled, because whatever funding sources the theatres/producers had once relied on didn’t show up. Formidable theatres lack the resources for even the smallest musical productions.
– Adam Gwon
Having to be a writer plus a producer plus a grant writer plus a marketer plus a contract negotiator. The number of hats that early career writers are expected to don is formidable, and my closet space is running out.
– Sonya Hayden
Still navigating the perceptions that some “gatekeepers” have about what people who don’t look like them “should” be writing.
– Christine Toy Johnson
My biggest concern about new musicals is just how difficult it is to get one produced, particularly for those who aren’t in NYC. The non-profit regional theatre pipeline nowadays mostly only takes on new musicals that already have commercial backing (three LORT companies on the West Coast told me as much in the past couple of years). This makes sense, since musicals are such an expensive undertaking, but is disheartening for artists around the country who can’t find those commercial connections in their regions. Even receiving grants or winning competitions isn’t a guarantee that your work is going to be produced.
That said, I’m one of the lucky few who has an original work being produced in the coming season, but I can only attribute that to the fact that TheatreWorks Silicon Valley has such great buy-in into the new works process from their donor/audience base. It feels like most other similar companies might be willing to take risks on less expensive new plays, but new musicals feel like a tough sell without some money being brought to the table already via a commercial producer.
– Min Kahng
The BIG barrier is that we get stuck in reading phases and pieces actually need physical labs with directors and choreographers. Directors/choreographers should not be trying to stage a show in three weeks of rehearsal before a production where the show will be reviewed—even out of town.
I also think regional theatres should be looking at doing New Play Network five-show world premieres for musicals where they partner together to create the actual financial possibilities that commercial theatre create so that more inventive and surprising work could be created too.
– Kait Kerrigan
If there is no support system in place believing in you and your work, precious time and energy is spent seeking that out, and perhaps never finding it. We could use a meeting space where writers could be connected to producers and investors who would commit to being a part of the creative journey of a piece over the long term.
– Rona Siddiqui
One challenge as a musical theatre writer is knowing how to balance efforts between writing new work vs promoting and pitching existing work. On one hand there is the temptation to spend a large amount of time trying to apply for grants and residencies, self-produce music and demos in hopes of putting material out there, and put together concerts to generate content for social media. That in and of itself can be a full-time endeavor and creates an opportunity cost to creating new work. The challenge is knowing where to spend your time since both avenues don’t generate income and it’s hard to know whether the lack of traction on a project is due to not enough people knowing about it, or whether time would be better spent on a new idea.
– Benjamin Velez
We are inspired to write by the prospect of speaking to our generation, but when we are fortunate enough to have a production, we quickly discover that our generation can’t afford the ticket prices. So then you are essentially writing for the tastes of people 20-40 years older than you. And that audience determines whether your work has “merit.”
– Max Vernon
Because readings are often the only developmental steps offered to us for years, so many elements that make our medium great (movement, orchestration, design) are divorced from the development process—so by the time a major production is (hopefully) manifested, we musical theatre writers haven’t had nearly enough time to consider those tools in the construction of our shows.
– Zack Zadek
The huge barrier of needing to make demos when I’m Deaf. I wish there was a free service or grant-supported service that would help make recordings for composers who do not have the skill (or ability or funding) to make auditory demos.
– Jay Alan Zimmerman
What obstacles are you navigating?
I’ve had a five-decade career. I’ve toured much of this world as a performing musician. As a songwriter, composer, and producer, I have worked in television, movies, the record business and, for the past ten years, in theatre. The music business as a whole is in the toilet because of streaming. Legendary artists are no longer getting their royalty checks. The younger ones are touring like crazy. The older ones are looking to Broadway (David Byrne, Bruce Springsteen, etc.) Musical Theatre, in my opinion, is in direct competition with this trend. I’m not trying to downplay the value of any work. I only want to point out that a very traditional theatre industry is being heavily infiltrated by the pop music industry.
– Alan Alexander
Supporting new work” includes supporting the creators of the work. New work doesn’t just magically appear; it takes months, sometimes years to craft a new piece. Writers shoulder all of the costs for this—time, demo production, etc. Some of the most amazing development opportunities don’t even offer a writer stipend or cover out of town travel expenses (note: covering travel is actually not “compensation”). But they DO pay performers, tech, and staff. What?!?!? One program told me they’d HIRE a copyist for my workshop but would not pay ME if I was the copyist. I almost referred myself for that job under a pseudonym!
– Amy Engelhardt
CAST ALBUMS! They’re so important to the lives of musicals. These days more and more people are producing albums in ways outside the traditional (and very expensive) cast album model, sometimes even before a show has been produced, or produced in NYC. Self-produced albums, live albums, concept albums, EPs…I want to hear about all the ways writers are putting albums into the world.
– Adam Gwon
It would be great if there was more government funding (or at least more neutral funding) for play and musical development so that theatres were not dependent on individual donations and producers who want to produce to their taste. I think in general and especially the last few years, we as artists are in this constant fight for resources and our lives and ambitions are dictated by scarcity mentality -- but there should be room for everyone!
– Jasmine Joshua
When there are so many incredible writers writing fascinating relevant stories, but all that seems to get produced are 80s and 90s movie adaptations, there is a problem. Our art form can be a powerful tool to use storytelling to connect, inspire, and provoke, but the fact that this kind of art is a risk to producers is troublesome. We need more daring producers who stand by and will go to the mat for the innovative, the weird, the bold, the gut punches and the zany.
We also need a Department of Arts and Culture at the federal level that doles out financial support to arts education, and theatre at the community, regional, off and on broadway levels. Our value system is upside down in this country with the war machine and corporate interests at the top, and life enrichment and education at the bottom. We need to fight to change this broken system.
– Rona Siddiqui
The fact that there seems to be no standards for what theatre writers get paid during development. Everything seems to be negotiable and it’s usually the writers who barely earn a dime over what can be a five year or more process of developing a new musical. Because we don’t have a union negotiating fees for us, including for readings, workshops, rehearsal processes, etc., it means we often work for nothing in hopes of having a big hit down the road, which feels like an even more elusive dangling carrot than it used to be. Writers are assumed to be passionate about their work and so it’s accepted that they are willing to put in years of work for the promise of future income, but it then becomes near-impossible to make a living as a musical theatre writer who has not reached Broadway (which describes the vast majority of us). In a post-COVID landscape where everyone else involved in development is getting compensated for their time in a more equitable way, it feels only fair that writers are as well.
– Benjamin Velez
ACCESS. When shows open so close to the Tony Awards but the captioning systems supported by Broadway require over a month to create AFTER opening night, the window is just too small for me to get any chance of access. But if there were some Deaf Tony voters, then maybe every show that wants to win a Tony would have to get their access materials together faster. Maybe directors would be encouraged to provide open captioning as a part of their show design and projection design. Maybe Broadway theatre owners would build captioning into every seat like the Met, which has been providing captions (Met Titles) for every opera, for every performance, and from the very first performance, for nearly 30 years! But Broadway can barely get captions to phones after a long wait. How can I even participate in discussions with my peers if I can’t see the shows?
– Jay Alan Zimmerman
