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ShowbizU: Festival of New American Musicals- Bob Klein & Tim Kashani

Name: ShowbizU: Festival of New American Musicals- Bob Klein & Tim Kashani
Uploaded: 2014-05-13T17:35:42+00:00
Duration: 2 min 10 s
Channel: Tim Kashani
Description: In this interview, Bob Klein explains the Festival of New American Musicals' mission to expand musical theatre in Southern California by presenting a…

13 May 2014 · 2 min

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2:10

In this interview, Bob Klein explains the Festival of New American Musicals' mission to expand musical theatre in Southern California by presenting a large number of new works across many venues rather than producing shows themselves. He highlights the festival’s early endorsement by major theatre figures such as Stephen Schwartz, Stephen Sondheim, Jerry Herman, Angela Lansbury, and Jason Alexander, and the strategic partnership with ASCAP that guided them to promising composers and works. Over its first six years the festival facilitated more than 135 shows and events across 83 venues. Klein details the practical process for creators: submit a script and demo CD, receive an evaluation that considers artistic quality and suitability for various performance contexts (high school, college, small or large theatres). Accepted works are added to a library of coverage that is periodically shared with interested theatres, enabling matches such as the production of the "Jerry Springer Opera." The conversation underscores the festival’s role as a matchmaking hub that connects new musical content with appropriate performance opportunities.

Chapters

The Festival of New American Musicals, the idea was, as I said, to have as many new musicals in as many venues as we possibly could. Our mission was to build up musical theater in Southern California, and that's why we decided we weren't going to try to just produce shows. We were going to try to lure people in, and by having Stephen Schwartz as our lead frontman And then that was followed very quickly by Stephen Sondheim. We had Jerry Herman, we had Angela Lansbury, we had Jason Alexander. So those were all of our lead people. The combination of that plus ASCAP was very helpful as a result of Stephen's interest and Kirker's interest. And what happened was they, they sat us down at the ASCAP offices and they laid out These are the shows you should read and listen to. These are the composers that you should talk to. This is where the most exciting talent is right at the moment. In the first 6 years, I think we've done something over 135 shows and events. When I say we, we produced very little. We basically presented all of this. We made them happen. And I think the last count was like 83 venues.
The nuts and bolts, somebody has a new musical and they come to your festival.
Yeah.
Describe that and then describe how then you help it find a venue after that point.
Yeah, well, if it comes cold, more than there's some do, more often they're likely to come by recommendation from somebody. Somebody said, oh, somebody told, you know, Stephen told me to contact you. Oh, yes. Okay. What we say is send us a copy of the book. Send us a demo CD and we will get back to you. And then if we like it, and like is two dimensions, like is quality, but like is also we have all these constituencies out here. Will it work for a high school?
Right.
Will it work for a college? Will it work for a small theater? Will it work for a big theater? And so we do that evaluation, and then we have this library of coverages. We have all of our shows in coverage that are available, and anybody wants to see them, any theater, you know, we send out the coverages at least once a year. Say, "Here's where we are right now." And out of that conglomeration of stuff, somebody says, "Well, I'm interested in doing that show." And/or the theater comes to us and says, "Hey, we got something we want to do." Chance came to us and said, "We want to do the Jerry Springer Opera," and we said, "Bring it on!" And it was terrific. So we're constantly messing around, making things happen. That's what we do.