CONTESTS

FREE LISTING of hundreds of contests for plays and musicals.

Premium Subscribers: get the additional ability to search by keywords. Who’s running contests for ten-minute musicals or one-acts? Who’s looking just for musicals? Dramas? Comedies? Or search by special interest, or geography.

• John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation (September 16)
• New Works of Merit (September 16)
• Song of the Year (September 19)
• John Lennon Songwriting Contest (September 20)
• Mid-Atlantic Song Contest (September 30)

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GLOSSARY OF TERMS

• Making Musicals:

  by Tom Jones. New York, Limelight Editions, 1998.

• Neighbor exposition:

  Information exchanged between characters who know one another.  Compare to stranger exposition (below). The concept here is that characters who already know each other often can’t be used to deliver backstory/exposition, because they already know this information and wouldn’t explain it to each other.  Two people who know one another don’t have to reiterate information which they both know.  You don’t have to say to your father, “Hey, Dad, have you heard from my sister Stella, your youngest daughter?” or “Dad, we’re having a Fourth of July party to celebrate the Fourt of July, which is a national holiday which falls on the Fourth of July, the anniversary of the signing of America’s Declaration of Independence.”

• Writingmusicaltheatre.com:

  Online instruction in the craft of musical theatre; affiliated with sister organization the Academy for New Musical Theatre. www.nmi.org

• List song:

  The list song is a song whose prime characteristic is lyric which features a list centered on a topic. Secondary characteristics vary, but might include: rapid tempo or pace, clever rhymes, minimal grammar and a sense of absurdity. But not all list songs are rapid, and some are serious. Often the raison d’etre of a list song is to feature a performer or to show off a clever lyricist. Examples include: “I am the Very Model of a Modern Major General” (Pirates of Penzance); “The Elements” (Tom Lehrer); “Tchaikovsky and Other Russians” (Ira Gershwin); “You’re the Top” (Cole Porter); “My Favorite Things” (The Sound of Music).

• Solving Your Script:

  by Jeffrey Sweet. New Hampshire, Heineman, 2001.

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FORMAT LIKE A PRO

*** THE FULL FORMAT GUIDELINES ***

WRITER BANK

• Kim Bixler - Bookwriter    SEEKING COLLABORATORS/PROJECTS
• Celeste Wolfe - Bookwriter   
• Sara Cooper - Bookwriter, Lyricist   
• Eamon O Tuama - Lyricist, Composer    SEEKING COLLABORATORS/PROJECTS
• Rabiya Mansoor - Bookwriter, Lyricist    SEEKING COLLABORATORS/PROJECTS

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You may peruse the Writer Bank for potential collaborators.

If you are a logged-in registered (free) user, you are also welcome to enter your own information into the Writer Bank.

Not yet registered? Just look for the registration form at the bottom of this page.

PRODUCERS & THEATRES

FREE LISTINGS of nearly 700 producers and theatres for potential submission of your work.

Premium Subscribers: get the additional ability to search by keyword or genre to identify who’s most likely to be interested in YOUR musical. (Large/small; comedy/drama; full-length/one-act; special interest like “women” or “LGBT” or youth theatre, etc.)

• Idaho Repertory Theatre (Accepts Musicals / Plays / )
• Nebraska Theatre Caravan (Accepts Musicals / Plays / Young Audience material / )
• Jewish Theater of New York (Accepts Musicals / Plays / )
• Seattle Repertory Theatre (Accepts Plays / )
• Artpark and Company (Accepts Musicals / Plays / )

*** COMPLETE LIST OF THEATRES/PRODUCERS ***

NEW MUSICALS ONLINE

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LIBRARY OF IDEAS (Royalty Free)

FREE ACCESS to a library of 1000+ downloadable royalty-free stories, plays, plots and other inspiring indeas we’ve found in the public domain for you. There’s a brief excerpt of every item in the library, so you can take a quick glance to see whether or not you want to read the whole text. In addition, the NMI staff has made annotations and recommendations for many of the titles in the library about their potential to become musicals. Save hundreds of hours of research and reading!

Premium Subscribers: get the ability to search the library for genre (Comedy, drama, suspense, ghost story, fairy story, etc.).

• Aristotle’s Bellows (by Lady Gregory)
• Ananzi And The Lion (by Sir George Webbe Dasent)
• Miss Dulane and My Lord (by Wilkie Collins)
• The Shepherd In The Distance (by Holland Hudson)
• The Pierrot Of The Minute (by Ernest Dowson)

*** LINK TO COMPLETE LIBRARY OF IDEAS ***

IMPROVE YOUR CRAFT

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LINKS

• The Highest Grossing Broadway Shows of All Time
• Tisch – Graduate School in Musical Theatre Writing
• Writers’ Guild
• Now Playing in San Francisco
• LA Stage Alliance

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MUSICAL THEATRE ARCHIVES

September 16, 1924     Lauren Bacall, star of Applause and Woman of the Year who came to the musical stage after 25 years of movie stardom, was born today.

September 13, 1948     Nell Carter, Tony Award and Emmy winner for Ain’t Misbehavin’, was born today. Later a television star, Carter’s also appeared in the 1979 film version of Hair and returned to Broadway two decades later to play Miss Hannigan in a revival of Annie.

September 10, 2000     Cats closed on Broadway, having run 7,845 performances. The show spent its last three years as the longest-running show in Broadway history, having eclipsed A Chorus Line for that honor on June 19, 1997.

September 2, 1910     Kitty Carlisle Hart, who appeared in numerous vaudeville shows and Broadway musicals – as well as on film with The Marx Brothers in A Night at the Opera – was born. Also well known for her 20 year leadership of the New York State Council on the Arts and as the wife of My Fair Lady and Camelot director Moss Hart. She died in April 2007 at the age of 97.

September 23, 1987     Director/choreographer Bob Fosse died of a heart attack, leaving behind an opus of work few of his contemporaries could even begin to compare with.