Prior to D&D4, I was starting to feel that I could only exist commercially. Musical theatre in this country has several planes of existence:
- The West End
- Regional Theatres
- Edinburgh Festival
- The Amateur Market
- The Youth Market
- The National Theatre Studio
- Mercury Musical Developments, Perfect Pitch etc
The West End needs an established hook upon which to sell a show, obviously. Elton John, Queen, a big movie… or just an established musical theatre writer like Andrew Lloyd-Webber.
Regional theatres don’t do much developing of new musicals. In the last few years, all I can think of is Birmingham Stage Company’s new adaptation of The Jungle Book (with music by BB Cooper who is, by the way, a staunch supporter of up-and-coming writers in the UK), and the show commissioned to open Leicester’s new venue The Curve: Simply Cinderella, by the lovely Toby Davies and Grant Olding.
The Edinburgh Fringe Festival has always had a sprinkling of new musicals, in particular Chris Grady's annual festival at George Square. I’ve had one at Edinburgh myself with Pandemonium. They do tend to be more light-hearted pieces, low on budget and therefore, sadly, under-developed. Besides, when you can’t afford to pay a theatre professional who is a few career steps ahead of you, it’s very difficult to show yourself how you can learn from the whole production process.
The amateur market prefers known quantities, mostly because “I’ve always fancied playing the lead in that…” so developing new musicals there is mostly unknown territory (although well worth exploring, in my opinion).
The youth market is potentially huge, but most writers look upon it with scorn, and that’s just their loss. If writers are willing to go there, once again they face the problem of not having a theatre professional to guide them. I’ve been very lucky to have worked at the youth department of a regional theatre, but mostly they just don’t have the funding to pay commission fees. And writers mostly can’t afford to do it for nothing.
The National Theatre Studio is… well, who knows what the National Theatre Studio is. A mysterious laboratory for the development of unique and innovative embryos of new genres, genetically engineered in darkened spaces, music and theatre being split and spliced in ways we can only imagine… because they’re mostly aborted after a few weeks when deemed unable to sustain themselves in the current cultural climate.
(None of that is true, of course. It’s just my fertile imagination. There is no information available on developing new material at the National Theatre Studio. I know they do it. I just don’t know what comes out of it, or how you get into it. Or anything else about it, to be honest.)
MMD has commissioned stuff. I’ve had a commission via them, and although it hasn’t come to a production yet, there’s always the possibility that it will one day, and I did get paid to write something: no mean feat these days. It should be noted that the aforementioned Jungle Book also came through an MMD commission, and the lovely Julian Woolford is working on a new project he met via MMD dating route.
The thing is, British Musical Theatre doesn’t have structure. The Theatre Royal Stratford East has been doing some amazing work developing and nurturing new musicals that specifically incorporate contemporary music into theatre, but to my knowledge it's a summer month-long program, and if you want to develop something outside of their target area, they probably can't help you (as much as I'm sure they'd like to).
There’s no place that teaches a solid foundation in craft to all writers in all types of musical theatre over an extended period of time. There’s no easy way into getting a production up on a stage and – crucially – learning from the process. There’s no obvious route into anything commercial, and then there’s a huge gaping hole between writers of new musicals and Elton John.
Not that he doesn’t belong, but he didn’t climb up the musical theatre ladder. He hopped across from somewhere else, which is something we cannot do. A big chunk of ladder, just gone.
In fact, there are no ladders anymore. I learnt most of what I know about stage management by working in a regional theatre, doing all the hours the gods send, taking on any job in every department, being a proper Casual and being far from casual about it.
I’m not sure you can actually still do that. It’s also very difficult to join a rep acting company and learn the ropes by doing a different show every few weeks for a whole season.
Life is no longer linear.
I love that! – but I need to figure out what it is now. Just saying “hopping around” doesn’t really cut it as a metaphor.
This post was prompted by the D&D4 session on writing to Andy Burnham.
It leads into the subject of a figurehead for British Theatre.
It’s also linked to thoughts from Peter Hall’s Diaries. (A book recommendation from D&D4.)
