Sunday, September 16, 2007
The 'Sundance' of musical theatre
Los Angeles Times: "Starting a musical theater festival from scratch with 31 shows was a 'maverick act, a leap of faith,' says Kris Stewart, co-founder and executive director of the New York Musical Theatre Festival. 'There seemed to be so many writers and directors who were crying out for this opportunity, and such a gap we were stepping into.'"
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3 comments:
What a wonderful and innovative idea. So much are we flooded these days with music and film festivals that we seem to consider theatre as something that can only be viewed once and at one time of the day. I also appreciate the idea of showcasing up and coming artist's pieces, regardless of whether or not they will amount to commercial status. In my eyes, the event truly fits its title, "The Sundance of Musical Theatre", now I just wish it could receive as much media attention as something like Lollapalooza has created.
I, personally loved reading about the concept behind this festival, I think it is really cool that there is a professional theatre festival geared to expose new works. Having always vacationed in Park City, as a child, my mother would go see films while we were skiing. I remember how cool that seemed to have all these brand new movies showing, and then sometimes those films would resurface later on in life and I could remember hearing about them at Sundance. The NYMF seems to do the same thing for musical theatre.
Sundance really revolutionized the independant cinema scene and gave great works of art attention that they would not have otherwise seen. It seems that this is doing the same thing for theater. The interesting comment from BD Wong that the show he was directing was the first thoroughly original piece that he had seen in a long time really goes to the core purpose of this festival. There are new things out there and there just needs to be a venue for people to see them. I think its a wonderful idea.
And its cool that memebers of the CMU faculty are participating.
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