Best New Song: 10 Years Later

Photo by Jon Tyson on Unsplash

Around 10 years ago I was holed up in a room on Broadway busy writing a new musical. It wasn’t THE Broadway, but rather a practice room at NYU - alums get some privileges for forking out the exorbitant tuition fees after all.

The new tunes were to be part of an 80s inspired musical ‘Spandex’. It found it’s way to an Off-Broadway theatre a few months later. Actually, the theatre was already booked at this point, and I had to get the songs written, and the score complete in time for rehearsals to begin in March

After the run closed the musical sat around for a few years, did some workshopping and resurfaced for a short run in Minneapolis. When the pandemic hit in 2020 it got turned into an audio-musical to be savored from the comfort of your favorite chair.

Which brings us to today… Director Liz Piccoli and the show’s originator Daniel F. Levin decided to create a tongue-in-cheek music video for one of the songs from the show, and the resulting cinematic frolic is doing the rounds at festivals.

The World Premiere of the full video is showing at the New York Indie Theater Film Festival later this month, but in the meantime the song has just won Best Original Song at the Paris Film Awards. Hence my tooting of horn.

I’ll let you get back to your regularly scheduled programming of dog videos now.

Goodspeed's Festival Of New Musicals

The Peculiar Tale Of The Prince Of Bohemia And The Society Of Desperate Victorians will kick off The 14th Annual Goodspeed Festival of New Musicals in January 2019.

With book and lyrics by Becca Anderson and Dan Marshall and music by Julian Blackmore, the show is based on a series of short stories by Robert Louis Stevenson.

When Prince Florizel learns that his father the King of Bohemia is dead, he seeks to escape the throne. He and his chaperone Colonel Geraldine are invited to join a secret society - The Suicide Club. Club members play a deadly card game nightly with higher stakes than the Prince has ever known. Realizing the deck is stacked against them, the Prince and Geraldine become inextricably linked to the club's members in this darkly hilarious new musical.

For more information about the festival and the show, CLICK HERE.

The Suicide Club update

Poster design by Hudson Meredith

After a few years on the back burner I'm very excited to dive back in to working on 'The Suicide Club' - a steam-punk musical comedy set in Victorian London.

Currently it's a lot of reformatting work as I move the project files from Sibelius over to Finale, with the addition of a few new songs and several tweaks (including a new character, so the sextet will now have to be re-worked as a septet...).

And there's nothing like a deadline, so we've set an early March deadline to finish everything off, ready for an informal table read of the latest draft in mid-March.

A new director with an exciting immersive vision for the show is on-board, and we're all hoping to move the show forward this year. Stay tuned!

Embracing the inner geek

Academia Nuts got a very generous name check by the lovely folks at Hypable.com in a recent article about how geek culture is driving current theatre trends. 

My favorite part of the article:

"The Cursed Child announcement certainly linked the worlds of page and stage forever. But a more perfect harbinger of things to come was a little show that debuted at the New York Musical Festival in 2014 called Academia Nuts."

Thanks, Hypable! Read the full article here.

Whatever Happened....?

Proud to announce that after completing phase one of Apples and Oranges' THEatre ACCELERATOR program in February with 'Spandex', music from the show was featured in a showcase held at Irvine's Barclay Theatre in August. 'Whatever Happened To Caring', the rousing Act 1 closer from the stretchy musical, was performed by an incredible cast and band, and the audience even got to join in by waving LED lighters provided by the producers. Check out the video below!

More info on the concert can be found here.

Tell me whatever happened to caring 🎶 (you're missed team @spandexmusical but we lit it up for you). pic.twitter.com/3kTrw7URfF

— A&O Arts (@ano_arts) August 27, 2017

Opening Night

Tonight is opening night for a brand new production of 'Spandex' at the Minnsky Theatre in Minneapolis. While I sadly can't be there as I am traveling I want to say a big thank you to all the cast, crew, and creatives for all their hard work in putting this production together. Break a leg and stretch it out!

Anyone interested in seeing the show, which runs to June 10, can get tickets here.

The cast of 'Spandex' in the original 2013 production.

Photo by Becca Anderson

Spandex gets an airing

Last week saw a group of talented actors get together around a table to stumble through a reading of the latest draft of 'Spandex'. As the authors we were trying out some new songs, story lines and general re-jigging of the plot. Thanks to everyone involved for lending us their time and energy!

Watch this space for more Spandex developments in the near future!

'Snow Way Out': First Public Performance

I’m thrilled to be able to announce a reading of the new holiday musical ‘Snow Way Out’, which I've been I've been working on with collaborators Becca Anderson and Dan Marshall.

The 90 minute 4-actor show will be presented as part of the York Theatre's Developmental Reading Series on Monday December 19th at 2pm, here in NYC.

We have a fantastic cast lined up, including Olivier Award-Winner Lesli Margherita(Matilda, Dames At Sea). The reading will be directed by the amazing Thomas Caruso(Southern Comfort, Brave New World), with musical direction by Kevin David Thomas.

Tickets are available here, and you can read more about the show and its cast in the press release here.