In this interview segment, Charlie Sohne and Tim Rosser discuss the National Alliance for Musical Theatre (NAMT) and its uniquely supportive approach to developing new works. They highlight NAMT’s proactive follow‑up with creators, its network‑building role, and the importance of tailored workshop formats—especially for dance‑intensive pieces like their musical "The Boy Who Danced on Air." The conversation underscores how NAMT not only funds productions but also guides creators toward the next steps, such as arranging staged readings that capture essential choreography, ensuring the work is presented in a form that reflects its core artistic needs.
I've never seen an organization that is so intent on just like, great, no, you're— this is your show. There's no reason why shows should not be produced.
Yeah, incredibly supportive. Yeah.
And, and, and their, and their follow-up too is, is great. I think that's a thing that, that separates organizations. I think there's plenty of people who are willing to put money into, uh, or not plenty, there are some people who are willing to put money into putting a show up and sort of seeing what happens, but I think NAMT really cares about the shows that they bring on and they, you know, follow up and they send ideas about like, oh, well, you know, here's someone else you should talk to who maybe wasn't able to make it to the festival. There's definitely been like a, in a very sweet, supportive way for NAMT, a sort of, hey, like, what is this? What is this next step? NAMT, its sort of reading format, you know, people at music stands. And one thing about the piece is that it's very dance-heavy because, you know, both because of the subject matter and also the way it's written, it's got sort of a theatrical language to it. And so this theater company was sort of kind and nice enough to be like, well, the thing that you need to see next is you need to see this on its feet with the dance element of it. You know, like, you can like put it up, you know, behind music stands all you want, and that's great, but like, it's called The Boy Who Danced on Air, you know.
It was a great workshop though. It was really cool to see things up on their feet, and we got to write some new songs for it. It was such a neat opportunity right after doing this, right after doing NAMT, where we had to, you know, put together a presentation. This was the opposite of that. It was like, let's feel it out. Let's see what Act 2 is all about. Let's talk about these song moments you haven't dealt with yet, or, you know, deal with them again. Yeah. And in a show like that, I mean, that's invaluable because we— the whole— every step of the way, we're sort of feeling it out and being like, what is this? What do we do here? How does this work in a show like this? You know, which is what we love to do.
