The National Alliance for Musical Theatre, the trade organization for musical theatre producers, presenters, bookers, light opera companies and universities, announced 10 musicals to be spotlighted in readings for its New York City festival conference, Sept. 24-25.
The 12th Annual Festival of New Musicals will be held at the Douglas Fairbanks Theatre and John Houseman Theatre on 42nd Street.
The shows include:
• Glimmerglass, based on James Fennimore Cooper stories and developed at Goodspeed-at-Chester, by Jonathan Bolt, Douglas J. Cohen and Ted Drachman.
• Lizzie Borden, seen at American Stage Company in New Jersey in 1998, the story of the infamous Massachusetts murder, by Christopher McGovern and Amy Powers. • Far From the Madding Crowd, based on the Thomas Hardy novel, by Gary Schocker and Barbara Campbell.
• Convenience, by Gregg Coffin (to be produced by Geva Theatre in Rochester, NY, in October 2000).
• Barbara Schottenfeld's Hot and Sweet.
• The Ark by Kevin Kelly and Michael McLean.
• Cupid & Psyche, based on the myth, by Sean Hartley and Jihwan Kim.
• Joe!, a musical about an actor trapped in a musical, by Dan Lipton and David Rossmer.
• Liberty Smith by Adam Abraham, Marc Madnick, Eric Cohen and Michael Weiner.
• Stephen M. Fisher's Mandela. The 2000 festival submissions totaled 147 and were evaluated by a committee of artistic directors from musical theatre organizations around the country.
Readings are sponsored by member organizations. The sponsors were not immediately announced, nor were summaries of each show.
Past presentations have included Children of Eden by Stephen Schwartz, The Bubbly Black Girl Sheds Her Chameleon Skin by Kirsten Childs and Honk! by George Stiles and Anthony Drewe.
"Out of our past 105 musicals that have been presented as part of the festival, more than two-thirds have gone on to subsequent productions," NAMT executive director Trudi Biggs said in a statement.
-- By Kenneth Jones
