On March 29, NAMT executive director Kathy Evans announced 15 grants, totaling $62,000, which will help shape the future of more than a dozen new musicals at various stages of development.
Five-time Tony Award nominee LaChiusa is again among the writers whose works will be supported by full production grants. Last season NAMT appropriated a full production grant to the Dallas Theater Center-Public Theater co-production of LaChiusa's musical adaptation of Edna Ferber's sprawling Texas-set novel Giant. It will debut in Dallas in early 2012 prior to an Off-Broadway bow.
LaChiusa and Fitzhugh's Los Otros, a commission by Los Angeles Center Theatre Group, is one of three recipients of the $10,000-$15,000 full production grants. A timeline for production has not been set according to CTG representatives. Also taking full production grants are Norwich, CT's Spirit of Broadway Theatre for Hartley's Snow; and Vermont's Weston Playhouse Theatre Company for Giering and Barry's Saint-Ex.
$2,500-$5,000 Workshop, or Reading Grants have been awarded to the Dan Collins-Julianne Wick Davis work Southern Comfort (at CAP 21); Deborah Zoe Laufer and Benjamin Velez's Sirens (at Florida Stage); Mark Bennett and Keith Bunin's The Life of John Birch (at La Jolla Playhouse); Seth Bockley and Gabriel Kahane's February House (at the Public Theater); and Drew Gasparini and Louis Sacco's Crazy Just Like Me (at the Uptown Players).
$1,000 Writer Residency Grants will go to Jake Anthony and Eric Dodson's Duplexity (at The Academy for New Musical Theatre); Anna Jacobs and Bill Nelson's Harmony, Kansas (at Barrington Stage Company); Creighton Irons, Sean Mahoney and Maggie-Kate Coleman's Factory Girls (at The Boston Conservatory); Terry Abrahamson, Michael Carlson and Buddy Reeder's How to Bust a Bully! (at The Little Theatre On the Square); Adam Gwon and Sarah Hammond's Spring (at Millikin University); Dan Collins and Julianne Wick Davis' Southern Comfort (at Playwrights Horizons); and Kimberly Rosenstock, Will Connolly and Michael Mitnick's Fly By Night (at TheatreWorks). Visit NAMT.