Academy for New Musical Theatre

Last updated

The Academy for New Musical Theatre (ANMT) is a non-profit 501 c(3) organization dedicated to the creation and development of new musical theatre. The organization is composed of writers, composers, producers and actors who work together to create new musicals. The workshop is located in 5628 Vineland Avenue, North Hollywood, Los Angeles, California.

Contents

History

ANMT was originally named The Lehman Engel Musical Theatre Workshop, and was founded by and under the direction of Lehman Engel. The Los Angeles-based workshop was an extension of the New York City-based BMI Lehman Engel Musical Theatre Workshop. In the late 1970s, the West Coast tradition of the workshop was carried on by John Sparks, Marty Hansen, and Lenning Davis. After Lehman Engel's death in 1982, John Sparks took over the role of founding artistic director. The writer's workshop remained under the name: The Lehman Engel Musical Theatre Workshop until 2002, when it became The Academy for New Musical Theatre.

Moderators include: John Sparks (Founding Artistic Director), Scott Guy (Executive Director), and Elise Dewsberry (Artistic Director, Resident Dramaturg).

Notable participants have included: Marc Hollman (Urinetown), Jeff Marx (Avenue Q), Hunter Foster (Clyde 'n Bonnie), Georgia Stitt (The Water), and Placido Domingo Jr. (Vlad).

Notable salon guests have included: Richard Sherman, Stephen Sondheim, Winnie Holzman, Jason Robert Brown, Charles Strouse, Marty Panzer, and Arthur Kopit.

Participation in the Workshop

The Writer's Workshop begins with the Core Curriculum in which writers complete foundation classes, craft specific labs, and are placed on writing teams to collaborate on various assignments. At the culmination, participants write and present a 15-minute musical. After Core Curriculum, writers might be asked to enter the Full Length Curriculum, in which participants create and develop a full length musical. After Full Length, some participants are invited to become members of the General Workshop in which writers receive developmental feedback on their projects on an ongoing basis.

Grants

The Academy for New Musical Theatre has received grants from the BMI Foundation, the Los Angeles County Arts Commission, the National Endowment for the Arts, Walt Disney Imagineering, and the Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs.

Production history

"40 is the New 15" at the Noho Arts Center (2010)
"A Ring in Brooklyn" at the Noho Arts Center (2013)

See also

BMI Lehman Engel Musical Theatre Workshop

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Broadcast Music, Inc.</span> Performing rights organization in the United States

Broadcast Music, Inc. (BMI) is a performance rights organization in the United States. It collects blanket license fees from businesses that use music, entitling those businesses to play or sync any songs from BMI's repertoire of over 22.4 million musical works. On a quarterly basis, BMI distributes the money to songwriters, composers, and music publishers as royalties to those members whose works have been performed.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Angelo Parra</span> American dramatist

Angelo Parra is an American playwright. He was born in Manhattan and grew up in the Bronx, New York City. After graduating from Fordham University, his career included work as a reporter/photographer, public relations professional, politician, free-lance writer, and PR and journalism teacher at New York University before turning to theatre in 1986. His first produced play, Casino, was presented at T. Schreiber Studio, and won a 1989 New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA) Fellowship in Playwriting and an Arts International grant.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Robert Lopez</span> American songwriter of musicals (born 1975)

Robert Lopez is an American songwriter for musicals and playwright, best known for co-creating The Book of Mormon and Avenue Q, and for co-writing the songs featured in the Disney animated films Frozen, its sequel Frozen II, and Coco, with his wife Kristen Anderson-Lopez.

Edward "Ed" Kleban was an American musical theatre composer and lyricist. Kleban was born in the Bronx, New York City, in 1939 and graduated from New York's High School of Music & Art and Columbia University, where he attended with future playwright Terrence McNally.

The BMI Lehman Engel Musical Theatre Workshop is a two-year educational program for people who wish to develop a musical and has been called "the premier incubator for Broadway". At the end of the second year, a small number of selected participants are invited to join the advanced workshop program for further study and collaboration on works in development.

Ethan Mordden is an American author and musical theater researcher.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lehman Engel</span>

A. Lehman Engel was an American composer for television, film, and operas and a conductor of Broadway musicals and operas.

Andrew MacBean is a Canadian theatre director and writer.

<i>A Class Act</i> Musical

A Class Act is a quasi-autobiographical musical loosely based on the life of composer-lyricist Edward Kleban, who died at the age of 48 in 1987. Featuring a book by Linda Kline and Lonny Price along with music and lyrics by Kleban himself, the musical uses flashbacks and the device of time running backwards to retrace the high and low points of the composer's personal and professional life.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Zina Goldrich</span> American composer (born 1964)

Zina Goldrich is an American composer known for her work in musical theatre in collaboration with the lyricist Marcy Heisler. Her best-known works as composer include "Ever After The Musical", "Taylor The Latte Boy" and "Alto's Lament".

Berton Leslie Averre is an American guitarist. He was the lead guitarist and one of the founders of the band The Knack. That group had a No. 6 UK / No. 1 US hit with "My Sharona", which sold 10 million copies in the US. Averre is also a vocal arranger, and has toured with Robby Krieger, Bette Midler, The Cowsills and Sarah Brightman.

George Steel is a musician living in New York City. He has worked in New York and around the world for 25 years as a conductor, composer, producer, singer, pianist, musicologist, and teacher. In January 2018, he was appointed Abrams Curator of Music at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum.

Kim Oler is an American television and theatrical composer. He is a member of the BMI and Dramatists Guild.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Brian Yorkey</span> American playwright

Brian Yorkey is an American playwright and lyricist. His works often explore dark and controversial subject matter such as mental illness, grief, the underbelly of suburbia, and ethics in both psychiatry and public education.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mark Hollmann</span> American composer and lyricist

Hollmann grew up in Fairview Heights, Illinois, where he graduated from Belleville Township High School East in 1981. He won a 2002 Tony Award and a 2001 Obie Award for his music and lyrics to Urinetown. He is a former ensemble member of the Cardiff-Giant Theatre Company in Chicago. He played trombone for the Chicago art rock band Maestro Subgum and the Whole, and piano for The Second City national touring company and Chicago City Limits, an improv company in New York City. He attended the musical theatre writing workshop Making Tuners at Theatre Building Chicago and the BMI Lehman Engel Musical Theater Workshop in New York. While at the Making Turners workshop he began a show with Chicago-based writer Jack Helbig that became "The Girl, the Grouch, and the Goat," which has had professional productions in Los Angeles and Chicago.

Carey Lovelace is an American art journalist, playwright, curator, and producer based in New York. She is the founder of Visions2030.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mátti Kovler</span> Musical artist

Mátti Kovler is a Russian-born Israeli-American composer and creator of new music theatre. Called by Steve Smith of The New York Times “a potentially estimable operatic composer in the making,” his music has been compared to Leonard Bernstein's.

Timothy Huang is a Taiwanese American playwright, actor, composer and lyricist. He is the creator of the award-winning one-man musical, The View from Here, the song cycle LINES, and "American Morning", aka Costs of Living, the latter of which won the 2016 Richard Rodgers Award for Musical Theater. He is the third Asian American to win the award since its creation and the first to win as a triple threat composer/lyricist/librettist.

Bruce Howard Sussman is an American lyricist and librettist. Though he has collaborated with numerous composers, he is probably best known for his work with his long-time collaborator, Barry Manilow. Together, they have written over two hundred songs for numerous recording artists, films, stage musicals and television programs.

Benjamin Velez is an American composer and lyricist.

References

[1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7]

  1. Spindle, Les (2008-07-02). "ANMT Gives Crash Course in Creating, Selling Musicals". Backstage. Retrieved 2014-04-20.
  2. "Music To Their Ears: ANMT's Bi-Annual Musical Theater Writers Conference". La Stage Times. Retrieved 2014-04-20.
  3. "Sondheim salon is a hot ticket - Los Angeles Times". Articles.latimes.com. 2009-04-02. Retrieved 2014-04-20.
  4. "Archived copy" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 2016-03-03. Retrieved 2014-04-04.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
  5. "Archived copy" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 2016-03-03. Retrieved 2014-04-04.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
  6. "Archived copy" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 2016-03-03. Retrieved 2014-04-04.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
  7. "A Salon with Stephen Sondheim at ANMT". YouTube. 2008-06-20. Retrieved 2014-04-20.