Funding update

The news I had been waiting for this past six months finally came, but I’m afraid it was not the answer I was hoping for.  The Canada Council for the Arts has turned down my request for $14,000 to cover travelling costs to Argentina, Brazil, South Africa, Korea and Japan.  I had hoped to do this in order to deepen my research into international musical theatre.  Somebody had suggested that I make a proposal to Kickstarter.com, but I learned that only US residents/taxpayers are eligible.  The Arts Council England had also previously turned me down.

To date, I have spent over £4,000 of my own money on this project.  This includes a trip to Australia and Singapore, as well as to a conference in Canada, as well as purchasing research materials.  To complete the project in the way I would like, I would need another £6,000.  This is money that I simply don’t have. 

I’ve always had a “Plan B”, which is to deliver the manuscript more or less as it stands at present, writing about these places without actually going there.  (Even with Australia, most of my actual research was done from London.)  It’s not my first preference, but it is a reasonable, practical consideration. 

I have applied to Access Copyright Foundation for a grant of $7,500 which would cover Argentina, Brazil and South Africa only.  I should hear from them in about three months.  I am also going to approach the Andrew Lloyd Webber Foundation as well.  However, realistically, I am now aiming towards Plan B.  I have held off on approaching a publisher because I was unsure of the scale of project I would be able to deliver. I can’t hold off much longer.  Therefore, I’m going to give it until the end of June.  If I haven’t raised the extra money by that time, I will then consider my research to be completed and deliver a final draft.

Of course, if I go with Plan B, that will make me even more reliant on the support of my colleagues in the places in question – for which I am extremely grateful.  Also, the growing network of educational institutions that have shown interest in using the finished product will be vital in persuading a publisher to come on board.

I’m not giving up – far from it.  I’ll let you know what happens.

Dress Circle

Much has been written in London's theatrical press recently about the threatened demise of Dress Circle, a shop that is a second home for connoisseurs of musical theatre.  Some artists have come forward with offers to do benefits to support the shop.  Others have countered that it's a business, not a charity and should rise or fall on its own.  While the latter is technically true, Dress Circle is not just a shop -- it is a vital part of London's theatrical infrastructure, and its loss would deal a body blow to the hopes of developing the musicals of the future.  When you shop on line, you don't get your questions answered by knowledgeable staff.  Nor are you likely to hear new work you've never heard before or to find the thing you didn't know you were looking for.  By whatever means, Dress Circle must be supported by those who have profited from it.  I mean not just the customers and the artistes whose work they promote, but by producers and agents as well.  A way must be found.

Musical Stages

There is a very good magazine published in the UK called Musical Stages.  (www.musicalstages.co.uk)  I have subscribed to it -- and occasionally contributed articles -- for many years.  Like me, they treat musical theatre as an international form, and have subscribers and correspondents all over the world -- except, apparently, in my native Canada.  Even though Toronto is arguably the world's third largest centre for commercial theatre and has given the world shows like The Drowsy Chaperone and The Story of My Life, they don't cover it, while they do cover such other centres as Melbourne, Tokyo and Amsterdam.  I suggested that they ought to do an article on Theatre Twenty, the new artist-led company that has started in Toronto with Colm Wilkinson, Louise Pitre and Bret Carver (and seventeen others).  But I haven't won them over yet.  Maybe you can help me.

A New Era for Canadian Musicals?

January 20th looks to be an auspicious date, at least for Canadian musical theatre.  On that date, Theatre Twenty will be launched in Toronto.  A collective of twenty of Canada's top musical theatre artists, including Louise Pitre and with support from no less a figure than Jean Valjean himself -- Colm Wilkinson, it would appear that Toronto's march toward becoming a major world centre for musicals is taking another bold step.  Of course, we've been here before, and the unfortunate demise of Australia's Kookaburra should serve as a cautionary tale, but I'm hoping they'll get it right this time.  They are beginning with a workshop of a musical based on Michel Tremblay's  Les Belles Soeurs.  Let's hope that it's the first of many, and that it will give me a cause (and a means) to come home at last.

An International Musical Theatre Network

One of my aims with A Million Miles from Broadway is to bring together some of the diverse international groups who are involved in nurturing and developing new musicals.  I think it would be wonderful if Mercury Musical Developments (UK), ScriptLab (Canada), Magnormos (Australia), Musical Theatre Limited (Singapore) and other groups in other parts of the world would form a network and begin talking to each other and sharing ideas.  It can't be too difficult -- the four groups I've mentioned are all on Facebook.  What do you say?

Glass Half Empty, or Half Full?

Part of the Canadian "Inferiority Complex" is the knack for always seeing the glass as being half empty -- and probably draining.  In 2006, when I attended the book launch for Broadway North; The Dream of a Canadian Musical Theatre, I was told that "things were terrible".  The Producers had closed early, Lord of the Rings had lost a ton of money, and Toronto may never recover from the SARS epidemic.  But, I thought, had not a Canadian musical just won five Tony awards?  And another had a successful Off-Broadway run?  The Canadian mindset has difficulty adjusting to non-mediocrity, it seems.

 It's also important to realise when things have moved on.  I recently attended a conference at Brock University called Lyric Canada.  The conference included showcases of new works for opera and musical theatre.  When I left in 1991, Canadian composers were often accused of writing "Broadway warmed over".  No more.  Writers such as Leslie Arden and Jay Turvey/Paul Sportelli are clearly charting their own courses.  Yet one of the speakers lamented a bygone time in the 1970s when cabaret and dinner theatre ruled.  You could see five original Canadian musicals in Toronto at any given time, and Ontario's cottage country summer theatres put on new musicals for the tourists.  Now, even the Charlottetown Festival has stopped producing new Canadian musicals.  However, what the speaker did not mention was that in the intervening time, Tarragon Theatre and the Shaw Festival had both turned to producing major new Canadian musicals, often on serious subjects.  Canadian Stage had presented the premieres of Pelagie, Larry's Party, Outrageous! and The Story of My Life, the latter of which would go to Broadway.  They also presented Leslie Arden's landmark The House of Martin Guerre.  Nothing on this scale was happening thirty years ago.  It may just be that a tourism-oriented summer theatre is not the best place to incubate new work.  While I share his lament for the loss of important training grounds, it's important to appreciate the gains that have been made.  If only London had it so good!  I'm based there now, and with a few isolated exceptions, the only way new musicals get mounted there is if the writers do it themselves on the fringe.  Few major companies show any active, ongoing interest in the development of new musical theatre.

And, dare I say it, it just keeps getting better.  This week the Toronto Star broke the news that Toronto will soon see the launch of a new artist-run musical theatre company, under the working title of Theatre Twenty (named for the number of actors who banded together to form it).  It remains to be seen whether they will survive all the financial and creative hurdles that lay ahead of them -- they would be well advised to study the case history of Australia's ill-fated Kookaburra -- but I think it shows that I am not alone in believing that the glass is half-full -- and filling.

Introduction

Musical theatre is an international form, not just an American one.  It can take root anywhere.  Following the publication of my previous book, Broadway North: The Dream of a Canadian Musical Theatre, the response I received from all over the world suggested that the principles I laid out therein – “putting the audience on stage” – applied not just to my native Canada, but to other countries as well. 
The musical theatre is a form that is so linked in the public’s mind with Broadway that it is sometimes referred to as the “American Musical Theatre”.  In fact, the late Peter Stone,
a former president of the Dramatists Guild and a noted Broadway librettist, once claimed that no musical theatre existed outside of New York City.  On the other hand, Alan Jay Lerner, the librettist behind My Fair Lady said, “Broadway cannot live without the musical theatre, but the
musical theatre can live without Broadway.  After all, its first home was Paris and then Vienna and then London and then New York.  So changes of address are not uncommon.” 
I want to explore the work that does exist outside of New York.  I’m not talking about the
many franchised versions of Fiddler on the Roof and Grease that have played everywhere from Tel Aviv to Abu Dabi.  I’m referring to indigenous musical theatre created in places other than New York by people other than New Yorkers and drawing on traditions other than just those of
Broadway.
Why do this? After half a century of New York domination, our culture is again becoming more cosmopolitan. In recent years, Broadway has played host to The Drowsy Chaperone (from Canada) and The Boy from Oz (from Australia).  Until the Second World War, there were not two centres for musical theatre, but at least half a dozen.  In addition to New York and London, we had Paris, Vienna, Berlin and Budapest, among others.  (And I’m not just talking about operetta, but musical comedy.) In spite of its reputation as the place where Broadway shows die, post-war France gave us at least three internationally successful musicals – Irma La Douce, the film The Umbrellas of
Cherbourg, and of course Les Misérables.
However, it’s not the past that interests me so much as the future. When people talk about the future of musical theatre, the names of Michael John Lachiusa, Jason Robert Brown, Andrew Lippa
and Adam Guettel are mentioned reverentially.  When will they add to that Leslie Arden (Canada) and Howard Goodall (U.K.)?  Other countries, such as Japan, Brazil, Argentina and Singapore are also making great strides toward establishing their own voices.   So the future centres of activity might include such hitherto neglected cities as Toronto, Sydney, Melbourne, Singapore, Tokyo, Buenos Aires and others.  In Australia, I visited Kookaburra in Sydney and Magnormos Theatre in
Melbourne (sponsors of the “OzMade Musicals festival).  In Japan, Shiki Theatre have been performing both Western imports – from Broadway hits like Wicked to Canada’s seminal musical Anne of Green Gables – and original Japanese works.  South Africa has also exported Sarafina and Kat and the Kings.
My book is still a work in progress.  With this blog I would like to keep you up to date on its development.  It is also an opportunity to be interactive.  I can't be everywhere at once, and you can help me enormously by filling me in on what is happening where you are.