Megan Hilty (Broadway's Wicked), Leslie Kritzer (Off-Broadway's The Great American Trailer Park Musical, Paper Mill's Funny Girl) and Sarah Stiles (touring Dr. Dolittle, Broadway and Atlanta's The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee), who all appeared in the Vanities world premiere for TheatreWorks in California earlier this year, will again play the roles of cheerleaders who mature over a decade of social and personal change between the 1960s and 1970s.
The NAMT festival presentation will be a 45-minute excerpt of the show by composer-lyricist David Kirshenbaum and librettist Jack Heifner, on whose hit Off-Broadway play the show is based. Carmel Dean will music direct, as she did in California. She also created vocal arrangements.
Vanities chronicles "the comic journey of three vivacious Texas teens from cheerleaders to sorority sisters to housewives, liberated women and beyond." It's a "tangy tale of coming-of-age in the '60s and '70s…a musical voyage racing through an era that had to be lived to be believed," according NAMT. It "offers a snapshot-sharp portrait of the lives, loves, disappointments, and dreams of best friends caught up in times that are a-changin'."
NAMT is the not-for-profit industry organization made up of hundreds of theatres and producers committed to musicals. The festival offers theatre writers a chance to show their wares before a wide community of money people, literary folk and artistic directors.
Casting for other NAMT Festival of New Musicals shows will be announced shortly. Kirshenbaum is busy this fall. His new musical, Party Come Here, is being seen in the New York Musical Theatre Festival; the cast album of his Summer of '42 musical will be released by Jay Records in October; and an evening of his work will be sung at Joe's Pub come November.
After a one-week workshop in fall 2005, TheatreWorks committed to a full production of Vanities - A New Musical. The world premiere opened TheatreWorks' 2006-07 season, in June 2006.
For more information about NAMT and other works in its 2006 Festival of New Musicals, visit www.namt.org.
