The five-month festival, now in its fourth year, celebrates the art of musical theatre with readings, workshops, cabarets, concerts, school productions and full productions.
Highlights include a staged benefit concert of 1776 on May 7 and 8 at Sony Pictures Plaza. Arthur Allan Seidelman will direct. A host of Broadway talent is expected to appear.
My Fairy Tale, a family musical by Schwartz (Wicked, Pippin, Godspell), will be presented Aug. 12-19 at the Pacific Conservatory of the Performing Arts and Aug. 26-Sept. 25 in the town of Solvang. The work, which first debuted in Denmark in 2005, tells its own story of Hans Christian Andersen and how he came to write the classic fairy tales treasured to this day. The musical also incorporates songs by other writers, traditional Danish folk songs, and pieces by Andersen himself.
South Coast Rep will present a May 1 reading of Cloudlands, a new musical by Adam Gwon and Octavio Solis, about a young woman piecing together her mother's secret life. A concert of Gwon's music is also being planned for Show at Barre.
James O’Neil 's Lonesome Traveler: A Journey Down The Rivers and Streams of American Folk, starring Tony Award winner Lillias White, will run April 13-May 8 at the Rubicon Theatre. James O'Neil will direct the work, which includes such songs as "Tom Dooley," "Goodnight Irene," "Blowin' in the Wind" and "This Land is Your Land." Rubicon artistic director James O’Neil will direct. Michael Lluberes and Joe Maloney's The Boy in the Bathroom, which took honors at the New York Musical Theatre Festival, will run April 15-May 22 at the Chance Theatre under the direction of Oanh Nguyen.
A concert presentation of Paradise Lost: Shadows and Wings, with book by Edward Esch, music by Eric Whitacre, and lyrics by director David Norona and Whitacre, will be presented June 25 Walt Disney Concert Hall. The musical about the last tribe of angels takes inspiration from Japanese anime.
Lemonade, a musical by high school seniors Sean Eads and Anthony Lucas, will be staged June 25 and 26 at Skylight Theatre; and a "high-tech" updated production of Alice in Wonderland will run Aug. 5-14 at the Norris Center.
For a complete schedule and tickets, visit LAFestival.org
