Good Tony’s Eve, fellow theatre lovers.

I’ll be providing my live commentary later this evening, so if you’d like to follow along, make sure to head back to my site. It’ll be like we’re having a watch party. I have friends. I definitely have friends.

Anywayyyyyy, yesterday I had the pleasure of attending the Canadian Festival of New Musicals, hosted @ Soulpepper and jointly produced by Musical Stage Company, Luminato Festival, and Soulpepper. Thanks to Josh from the Musical Stage board, who reached out via the Harvard alumni database and invited me. (Sorry for the subtle flex).

The Canadian Festival of New Musicals is like a mini NAMT festival (National Alliance for Musical Theatre), if you’ve attended one in New York. NAMT is divided into two parts: a professional conference with industry panels and networking, followed by workshop presentations of musicals in development (which are open to the public). The Canadian equivalent sort of merges the two into a weekend-long extravaganza, with an industry panel in the morning, and four workshop presentations throughout the day. This year, Sunday was pretty much a repeat of Saturday’s activities (apart from one different panelist in the morning discussion), so it seemed to me that most people attended one day or the other.

My Saturday started with a roundtable discussion about musical theatre development. The panelists were Michael Rubinoff (Artistic Director of Musical Stage / best known as the originating producer of Come from Away), Mara Isaacs (Broadway Producer / best known as the lead producer of Hadestown), Deirdre O’Halloran (Head of New Musical Theatre at Birmingham Hippodrome), and moderator Olivia Ansell (Artistic Director of the Luminato Festival). It was an interesting discussion. Some key takeaways:

• Broadway is broken (this is not news).
• Musical development takes time and money, and getting the work in front of relevant audiences is most important.
• Developing works in Canada/the U.K./smaller markets is much more economical than in major U.S. centres.
• The U.K. offers significant tax incentives for new theatre productions.
• Focus groups are great at understanding how to market something, but not at telling you what art to produce.
• Michael really loves Come from Away (fair, lol).

After a brief coffee break, the group split into two rooms to see the first of four workshop presentations. Each show was performed twice on Saturday so more groups had a chance to see it. Presumably, there was some sort of application process to determine which shows would be presented and which professional actors would be cast.

Each team presented a 45-60 minute excerpt from its show. Sometimes a show would choose to present, say, the first act mostly unabridged; others instead showcased a wider range of numbers and scenes. Two of the shows used a dedicated narrator to provide exposition and fill in the gaps between what was being presented and what was being skipped. I suppose the strategy varied depending on the stage of development each show was in, as some of the musicals felt more fully formed than others. I found it particularly compelling when the composers or book writers served as the narrator – it made me feel like I was really getting a glimpse into the creative process.

I’ll briefly describe the four pieces presented in the order in which I attended them, but I won’t be evaluative. They’re works in progress, after all.

The Vibe is On is written and performed by Luke Reese and Stew Stewart and explores the topic of Black identity and experience in the U.S. and Canada. It’s a deeply personal, contemplative piece that, in its current state, presents as spoken-word-poetry-meets-musical.

A Perfect Bowl of Pho is a show-within-a-show about a Vietnamese Canadian student writing a musical about his cultural identity and experience, centred around food. It’s written by Nam Nguyen (book, lyrics & music) and Wilfred Moeschter (music). This one has been in the Fringe circuit over the past few years, so I’d heard of it going in, but it’s nice to see it’s making moves toward the next stage of development.

Clara at the Door with a Revolver is being developed by Musical Stage and the Birmingham Hippodrome (which, I imagine, is why Deirdre from Birmingham spoke at the morning panel). Clara… is about a real-life 1890s Toronto murder trial centred on Clara Ford, a mixed-race, single mom accused of murdering a wealthy white man. The composer and lyricist, Ayanna Witter-Johnson, provided narrative context and played an incredibly cool-looking cello. (Book & additional lyrics are by Susan Wokoma).

The Crossroads is the reason I was invited to attend this festival in the first place, as the two writers, Kalos Chu (book & lyrics) and Ian Chan (music & lyrics) are Harvard alumni (thus the database outreach). The musical is about a young chef named Kevin who discovers a special peppercorn that lets him see the outcome of his decisions before he makes them. It read to me as Chef meets Everything Everywhere All at Once, which is fun.

It’s interesting that all four pieces deal with race, racial relations, or cultural identity in some way. Is this by design or by coincidence, I don’t know, but it made four very stylistically different pieces feel somewhat cohesive. All in all, it’s exciting to be invited into the creation process, watch artists figure out what their respective shows want to become, and potentially see something that could become Canada’s next breakout hit.

It’s also worth noting that the festival ran seamlessly, and there was ample access to food, so no complaints on my end. Thank you again for the invite, and I look forward to attending again in the years to come!