Sing Tank Live - THEatre ACCELERATOR Fall 2019 Cohort | Broadway Musical Pitchfest

Hello everyone and welcome to Sing Tank, the last day of our Theatre Accelerator virtual program. Theatre Accelerator is a brainchild of myself. I am Pamela Winslow Kashani.

And I'm Tim Kashani.

And together we are the co-founders of Apples and Oranges Studios and Apples and Oranges Arts. Theatre Accelerator is a platform that we do virtually on Zoom. And before we go any further, I want to do a shout-out to Zoom for becoming a sponsor for Theatre Accelerator.

And we—

heartfelt appreciation to Zoom for taking this on and being a partner with us. Through their virtual program, which is a platform to have virtual meetings, We do a 2-week accelerator program where we take the starving out of artists and we use Silicon Valley principles to help our teams become creative entrepreneurs.

To see how we got here, we're going to step back in the time machine and Pamela is going to take you through how we started off with Apples and Oranges Studios, our pro— for-profit company and moved into Apples and Oranges Arts, our nonprofit.

We started working together formally about 15 years ago when Apples and Oranges was born, and we began as producers of the show, co-producers of the Broadway show "Hair." And from there, we moved on to "Memphis," which won the Tony, which was thrilling for us. And, but we realized that that wasn't enough for us to just produce mainstream work, we wanted to really dig deep into new works. And so Bridge to Broadway was born, moving into the apples and oranges arts realm, where we created a mentoring educational program that used the High School of the Arts in Orange County and merged Broadway talent and created a system for us to cultivate new works. Showbiz U came out of that need to want to have an education element to what we were doing, and that has been going strong since 2011. Then we did American in Paris on Broadway, which took up a lot of our time, but even during that, we found time to cultivate Theatre Accelerator, which is this 2-week program that we're doing now. Today, you will hear from our 9 creative teams that are in Class 8 of Theater Accelerator.

One of the models that we've looked at along the development is how do we take this content and create it in a way that does not take 8 years to go down the traditional Broadway life cycle? We love Broadway. Working with these artists and our mission of taking the starving out of artists, we said, get your product in front of an audience and let them start to consume it. And we have created 2 digital films based on Emma, which came through Bridge to Broadway. And we have now launched an initiative that looks at their shows as entrepreneurs, meaning that they own intellectual property that they want to share on the stage, on the screen. They want to create merchandise. They might have podcasts, you name it. And over the 2 weeks, they started by being entrepreneurs in the first week, analyzing their product market fit, looking at minimum viable products and all of these Silicon Valley terms. And that took them to a point where now they are back at the creative, ready to pitch their shows to you and start looking at how they can take the starving out of themselves. And by doing that, we have our team as well as people that have supported us and amazing mentors throughout those 2 weeks. Each day they've gotten a mentor, everything from investors, in the tech world to heads of large companies in the entertainment space. And you can look them all up on our website to see that it takes a village to actually make this mission come true.

And we've had over 60 creative teams go through Theater Accelerator. This is our Class 8, and applications are now open for our Class 9. So if you know anyone who might be interested in applying, please go to nycoc.org. And also, if you want to be a part of our conversation going forward, we would appreciate it if you would please subscribe to our YouTube channel. And also, if you want to donate or help us out in any way, please go to nycoc.org/patreon or /donate.

And now comes the fun. The first thing we want to do is share with you that we have 8 amazing judges, and we don't call them sharks because they are so friendly. The way the process will work, each of our shows will get 5 minutes to pitch, and at the end of their 5-minute pitch, then they will have 5 minutes of Q&A from the individual judges. After all of our teams have gone, then we will have one last round of questions to get to the nitty-gritty, and then we will be off into the judging time cycle where we present one ninth team that's come through our two weeks.

The—

each of our judges gets one virtual dollar, thus the stakes are incredibly high. But all of this is to say that what we're doing here is supporting, and the judging is very, very much a small part of it. In fact, the biggest part of it is just getting to hear from people who have not seen the shows yet, except for one of our colleagues, Frank Cavanaugh, who he comes in at the end of the first week and gets to give some guidance. And then he's the one that says, wow, you came a long way, or, hmm, what happened in the last week? But it's usually, wow, you came a long way.

Let us introduce our wonderful judges without further ado. And our first judge is a dear friend and also a part of our Apples and Oranges team. She is the creator and founder of Fire Muse Productions, which is a consulting and investment firm that works in stage and in film. She's heavily into finding diverse stories and inclusion is a big part of what she does. She's a member of the Broadway League and a Tony voter since 2011. We have Deborah Taylor Barrera.

Next up, a friend that we met at the TED conference a few years back, and that's Alyssa Cohen. Alyssa Cohen, the startup coach, and she helps startups founders. Okay, we need to mute. If you are not speaking, one thing, everybody please mute. We will run a test again. The echo is gone. I'm going to start over. That way we can hear Alyssa Cohen, our startup coach, investor, and as I mentioned, good friend from the TED conference. She helps founders mature into world-class CEOs for over 20 years. She started at the age of 2. Many companies including Etsy, Foursquare, Venmo, InnoVision, Tory Burch, Mark Weldon, The Wirecutter, as an executive coach for Runway, the incubator at Cornell NYC Tech that helps postdocs and commercialize their technology and build companies. She's also a Broadway investor and is looking at shows with two Tony Awards.

Next up, we have Cindy Convery. Cindy is an entrepreneur and activist on she wears many, many hats. She was part— she was a director of ABC TV San Francisco and is one of the first few women who have been a Director's Guild assistant director. And she's done many feature films and her own production company, Foothill Productions, has produced over 1,000 movie trailers for Disney, Warner Brothers, Fox, Paramount, Lionsgate, et cetera. And she's a proud member of the Choctaw Nation. So welcome, Cindy.

Yes, we do a lot of virtual hand waves.

It's kind of like jazz hands.

And alumni judge Robert Diamond, who is a tech entrepreneur as well as media guru and CEO, founder, editor-in-chief of Broadway World, which big shout out because we're also live on Broadway World today. Robert began, as many of us, caught into a crazy story of how he got into this industry, and if you ever get a chance, you want to corner him and ask him to tell that story about what got him where he is today. It's a little Easter egg for all of you. They're Broadway World, they cover over 130 markets around the world, and welcome back to our alumni, Robert.

And next we have a dear old friend of ours. She's not old though, we're the old ones. This is Gaylen Hooks. Gaylen, you may know by seeing her incredible work on YouTube. She has over 200 million views across social platforms of her dance, her choreography, and her directing. She is an MTV VMA-nominated choreographer and has produced on America's Got Talent and The Voice, and did choreography for Broadway revival of Dreamgirls. She is also a member of the League of Extraordinary Dancers and choreographer as well. So welcome, Galen Hooks.

Next up, another alumni judge who's been with us for every one of our Theater Accelerators. I mentioned him earlier, that is Frank Cavanaugh. Frank and I went to college back together and we studied computer science, which leads perfectly to today. Frank is an innovator as well as an entrepreneur, has taken many a company on the track to development as well as going public. And now he specializes in helping companies get back on track when they've veered off from where they need to go. But more importantly, he is very good at cutting to the chase and getting to help these companies where they need to get to, including our shows. And Frank, we welcome you again to class number 8.

Our next judge is a veteran. He's been a judge for us many times.

All 8?

That's close.

All 8?

Impressive. And he is just down the street from us. So if we shouted loud enough, we could probably have this conversation together. Jonathan Leden is, for 10 years, over the last 10 years, was the Chief Operating Officer of Citadel Global Equities. And after, and way before that, starting his career, it was in the arts as a stage manager where he met his lovely wife, Krista Leden, and together, They have taken their incredible creative and entrepreneurial skills to help the Orlando Ballet. And as of late, they have revived the Orlando Ballet to become a thriving organization that is making profits and filling houses. And we're so happy to have you here, Jonathan Leden.

And last but certainly not least, we have Laura Wagner, another first-time judge. As Laura, a producer, of feature films, documentaries, theater, and films that have premiered at some of the top-tier film festivals, including Sundance. She's also Creative Producing Fellowship at the lab there and has produced content for Patagonia and Intel, among other corporate-type companies. On the social media campaign and dozens of Broadway shows and the theatrical companies, including Maman Chants and Tectonic Theater Company. Say that 3 times fast.

I dare you.

Associate producer of the documentary from John Leguizamo, Tales from a Ghettoknown, and Pulse: A Stomp Odyssey IMAX film. Welcome, Laura.

All right. We've got amazing sharks today, and we have amazing teams that are going to, that are going to present. And without further ado, let us get started. Team number 1 is Stefan Van de Graaff, Denning Burton, John Donovan Wilson, and they are going to present to us Sherlock the Musical.

The year is 1904. I, Sherlock Holmes, and my friend Dr. John Watson have been presented with a case unlike any we've ever seen. Here's what we know. Last week, on a misty London morning, a carriage was en route carrying an influential German ambassador to the London Embassy. But when it arrived, the carriage was empty. Its passenger vanished. With political tensions at their breaking point and rumors of war bristling through the city, it's up to us to solve the case. The game is on.

Driven by a relentlessly entertaining script and contemporary score, Sherlock the Musical chases after history's most iconic duo as they stow aboard board trains, infiltrate Scotland Yard, and attempt to save a terrified London from the sinister designs of Sherlock's most notorious enemy. But time is ticking, and when times are darkest, Holmes and Watson will discover that the key to their success is also what matters most.

Sherlock the Musical is an aesthetically dark show with a warm emotional heart. It is a story of friendship and sacrifice calling out to a world that is growing increasingly lonely. The score of Sherlock the Musical was carefully designed to combine the rhythms and melodies of pop music with the historical setting familiar to Sherlock Holmes. Musically, it's built on the trends of the most popular shows on Broadway today.

Underground in our soul, that's what defines us. You could discover a world hiding underneath, but they only see what's on the surface.

Whether heard in a panic-driven ensemble number: Terror in London.

Have you read the news?

I was there.

Something is coming.

Should I stop the bomb?

But in the end—

If it happened once, could it happen again?

<LYRICS>Here on the streets.</LYRICS> Or in the heartfelt vulnerability of the protagonist, this show is something for everyone.

<LYRICS>Step back into the shadow.

Some don't need to stand in the light.</LYRICS> Alongside the witty writing and powerful score of Sherlock the Musical, the general zeitgeist around one of literary history's most beloved characters opens a window for both artistic and financial opportunity. Even today, Sherlock Holmes-related keywords are searched over an average of 300,000 times per month. Over half a billion dollars in international box office ticket sales demonstrates a strong global appeal for all things Sherlock, and the ongoing spikes around the release of all forms of Sherlock content reveals that hundreds of millions of loyal fans all have one thing in common: they want more.

Our primary goal is to find a passionate creative producer who can provide support and mentorship as we bring Sherlock the Musical to fans worldwide. Beginning in January, we're launching our campaign to build a community of Sherlock superfans across all social platforms, all while developing the show through stage readings, workshops, and a regional showing. For Sherlock the Musical, the game is on.

Are you in?

Nothing from Sherlock's eyes. The shocking plot is not what you thought, so are you watching close enough? Don't miss this mystery online. He won't be outdone, Sherlock Holmes always one step ahead of them. There's only one you can't outrun. In the streets of London, are you watching close enough? Hi, I'm Denning Burton.

I co-wrote the book and wrote the music and lyrics for Sherlock, and I'm a Nashville-based songwriter having worked in the pop industry for quite some time.

I'm Stephen Vandegraaff.

I was the lead writer on Sherlock the Musical, and I own a digital advertising agency that produces viral content, and we have over 150 million views on the stuff that we've written and created.

And I'm John Donovan Wilson. I'm the theatrical collaborator for songs and for the script, and I'm a New York-based actor, director, and choreographer, and the voice of Sherlock. We'd love to turn it over to you for questions. Thank you so much for watching our pitch.

Well, thank you, and now we will open it up to our Q&A time.

Sure, what a great first presentation. You mentioned that there's a lot of Sherlock out there in the marketplace. Other than being a musical, how else will it differentiate itself for people searching online? Is it based on a classic Sherlock story, or is it something totally fresh and new?

I can, I can take that one. So it plays off of a lot of the most beloved stories, but it has a completely unique story in and of itself. So it will certainly appeal to those people who are lovers of Sherlock. And then on top of it, the music and the musicality and the way it's presented, I think, is a very unique and fresh take on a beloved classic.

Excellent. Next question.

So you guys realize, like, when you sort of pitch this, right, that when someone could take a look and say Oh, you went out and found a theme that wasn't done, you knocked off, like you said, Hamilton's popular, we took a bunch of data and you sort of built a musical based on commercialism rather than art, right? Well, so I love that and I think it was great and I like the data and I like the way that you guys put it together and the way you presented it. So, you know, I am the token 1% finance guy and I thought it was a great presentation, so good job.

Thank you.

I thought it was a great presentation, guys.

Excellent.

More questions for the show.

Yeah, I'll jump in. Um, this is Laura. I really also liked the way you presented that there's this global audience that wants more and more Sherlock, which is awesome. Question would be, when you're pitching it, how do you want us to feel about the emotional hook and the emotional arc of it? What do you want your audience to leave feeling? Because you did a great job of presenting the beginning of the story where these guys get this letter and they have to solve this mystery, but where's it gonna go?

Where's it gonna take us emotionally is what I'm wondering.

So you wanna take that, Denny?

Sure, yeah. That's a great question. Thank you, Laura. One of the things that we just want to convey is the adventure of Sherlock Holmes. I grew up reading all of the novels and you love the pursuit of the case, right? And I think that came across. And then there's this, there's an emotional component, that brotherly love between John Watson and Sherlock that is really highlighted. And we have songs that focus on that and it's hard to showcase it in 5 minutes, but that is really part of the show.

It revolves around those two characters.

And if I could add, it's sort of the, the second act takes a turn as things kind of hit the fan, and the really, the story then dives deeply into this question of, uh, self-importance where Watson has to make the decision whether he's willing to give up his own pride and feelings of importance in order to help the situation and sacrifice for Sherlock. So it ends up being sort of a brother-on-brother sacrifice for the greater good than we really dig into in the second act.

For the rest of it, you have to see the show.

Exactly.

And we have time for one more question.

Um, I have a question.

Yes, Deborah.

Can you speak a little bit about the expectation that you have for your initial investors to either enhance your workshops or whatever the development track is that you end up on? Can— do you have any sense of that that you would like to share with us?

We would love to—

go ahead.

Oh yeah, so we would, as Johnny pointed out, we'd like to start with a reading, and in terms of a dollar amount, we were looking for a $30,000 investment to help us to put on the reading. And one thing that is really important to us on that note is we care a lot about somebody who's passionate about Sherlock and the zeitgeist in general, beyond just the financial investment. We want somebody to enjoy this ride with us. But that is certainly the first step that we'll be looking to take. And then beyond that, we—

Great. Thank you.

It was a great presentation, by the way, guys.

Excellent.

Well done. Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

All right, that was a strong start, and thanks to all three of you presenters. We're moving on to our next presenter, our second project. We have Andrew Lum. He is going to tell us all about Game Development: The Musical.

Can you guys see my screen? Looks like you can.

Yes.

Hi, I'm Andrew Lum, and this is Game Development: The Musical. So a little bit about me. I actually am a game developer. I'm currently the director of gaming at The Pokémon Company International. Before that, I ran my own game company for many years. We sold millions of copies of our games. But I want to tell you about a time even before that when I worked at the company called Handheld Games, and we made kids' licensed titles that people call shovelware. In fact, one of the games was so bad it actually became an internet meme. And working at this company was one of the best and worst times of my life. We had a lot of fun. There were Nerf wars, maple syrup drinking contests, but there was a lot of overtime. We had some really challenging bosses. And it led me to write a musical about it.

One minute, people, let's go!

Guess, guess, so serious. Hundreds of thousands of lines of code, I feel like my head is about to explode.

Guess, guess, this is great.

A lot of racing and drawing tits. Guess, guess, so serious. I love the designs, I have to give my best.

My hair's falling out from all the stress.

We'll take a swim.

—So as you can see, Game Development: The Musical is an ensemble show. So let me introduce you to the cast of the show. This is Andrew, our protagonist. He's a new tester, young and inexperienced with big dreams. Andrew falls in love with Ellie, an artist who's done with making these licensed shovelware games and wants to make her own indie game. They work with John, the game designer, who's also an office Olympian.

Sometimes I swear I'm still in high school.

Now let me introduce you to some of the management. We have Larry, the lead engineer, who's the classic 40-year-old virgin. Outside the office, we are geeks.

We don't know how to talk to girls, but in the office, we are gods.

So things change for Larry when he saves Leah's life when she almost chokes to death in an animal cracker eating contest, and then Leah is suddenly chasing Larry really hard.

Give me a kiss, make my heart ignite.

Give me a kiss, keep me warm at night. Give me a kiss, let me know that I'm your girl.

Throughout all of this, they're still trying to ship a game and not go out of business. And through that process, Dick, the CEO from the publisher, actually buys the company. Future games will make me a lot of money. I'll steal their tech and then I'll close the company. So how does it all end? Well, you'll have to watch the show to find out. So in terms of market demographics, we think that this is obviously going to appeal to gamers, millennials, Gen Zs, pretty much younger people who've worked in an office, appreciate geek culture, like musicals, and like comedy. We're targeting YouTube as where we want to start this show. If you look at YouTube, there's lots of channels really based around video games, but there are even channels based around video game musicals. Random Encounters specializes in this, and they have 2.9 million subscribers. So our plan is to create a show on YouTube, a web series, and then hopefully long-term bring this series to Netflix or Hulu or one of the other SVODs. And while I know this sounds crazy, it's actually been done before. Felicia Day's done it with The Guild. Freddie Wong has done it with Video Game High, and we've seen Rachel Bloom's success, which is huge, but it did start on YouTube. So our 2020 plans are to build the season, season 1 of this web series, do a digital album release, and to build our social following. And so a little bit more about myself. I've actually done short films before. This isn't my first short film series. I've done— I was a finalist for a Nintendo series, as well as I've done a bunch of film races. Several of which we won Best Film for. So what we're looking for today is a producer mentor to help with money, but really also the resources and the guidance to build a show that really can start as a web series, but also grow to be a bigger show long-term. And we hope that you guys can help us to make Game Development: The Musical a reality.

<LYRICS>Break them up to more things, a serious word.</LYRICS> Work into serious. Work deleterious. Work into serious. Work with serious games of serious work.

And with that, I will open up to questions. Thanks very much for your time.

Andrew, can you hear me? I can. It's Cindy. I think it's hilarious, and I wondered if you're aware of Quibi. Have you thought of taking it to Jeffrey Katzenberg?

I'm not. I'm— when it comes to most stuff outside of video games, I'm not super connected with people. So I would love the introductions to the right people to make that happen.

Quibi? Jeffrey Katzenberg started DreamWorks with Spielberg. You probably know his name. Oh yeah, okay, I apologize. Meg Whitman just started a new platform called Quibi, and they're releasing 10-minute series every Monday. So they build on a story. Which this seems like a perfect fit if you did 10 episodes at 10 minutes each to build the musical.

Yeah, that's actually what I did. I broke, um, well, I originally wrote it as a stage play, and every time I pitched it, people said that it's not the wrong audience. And so I took the 2 acts and I broke each act into like an hour in each one, then like, or about an hour. And so I could definitely break these up into pieces.

If it's a video platform, that's where I think that they're actively acquiring things like this right now, like every day. Wow, that sounds fantastic. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So we can talk later about it. That would be great.

It may be acquired during the next hour. That's how fast. Okay. Alyssa, you have your, your hand up.

Andrew, so charming, so great. And as someone who's like looking for the next sort of be more chill, like for reals, I just was so resonating with this. Can you tell us more about what you're experiences in creating a sort of a social media and viral following? 'Cause that seems like it's gonna hinge on this, unless it—

Yeah, so I'll be honest, that's one of the things I've always struggled with. Even though I've worked at big companies and I've had successful games, I've always partnered with people. So I think I am looking, if I'm gonna go solo with this, then I have some friends who've worked at Razer, friends who've interviewed PewDiePie and stuff like that. So the plan would be, if we go on the YouTube route straight, we're gonna, we're gonna reach out to Freddie Wong, we're gonna reach out to Random Encounters, we're gonna ask them to be the cast rather than using traditional Broadway people. We're gonna be using you as much, but before I make that step, having a little bit of funding, having a little bit of establishment before making those connections. Now I do, I can talk to these people, I am connected to them already, but I want to make sure I have the strongest pitch before I go to them with it.

Excellent. Thank you so much, Andrew. That was a lot of fun.

We have a little bit more time.

Do we have time for another question or two?

Yeah.

Okay, I'll ask a question.

All right, go ahead.

Yes. It's been really fun. It's such an original idea for a musical. I don't feel like musical form has mined this territory before. And I love the way you introduced all your characters. I love that there are female characters. My question was just about your ask. You're looking for a producer/mentor. And then it said $50,000 under that. Does that mean you're looking for that producer mentor to put in the $50,000, or are you looking for that person to help you raise your seed money?

It could be either way. I mean, I definitely feel like, again, I've got a lot to learn about being on YouTube or being on these platforms. So if there's someone who can just do that, that's fantastic. Obviously, we also do need funding to make it a reality. I, you know, I, that opening number that I threw together, I think I did for like $1,000, but that's also because everybody volunteered their time, right? Had I actually paid everybody, that would have gotten pretty expensive pretty quick.

Good. Excellent. Really fun idea.

All right. And for all of you that are watching us live right now on the stream, right below you is that subscribe button, because not only are you getting to see this great stuff, we have songs from the different companies on our YouTube channel as well. Well, thank you very much, Andrew. Over to you, Pamela.

All right, team number 3 is up. We're gonna have Gary Jaffe and Brandon Lambert show us their show At First Sight.

Hi, my name is Brandon Lambert. And I'm Gary Jaffe. And this is our musical comedy At First Sight.

"At First Sight" is a funny, affectionate new musical about finding love at any age. It's about an elderly divorcee and her chronically single granddaughter who go from playing board games to playing matchmaker for each other.

So the cast consists of these two women and their two respective love interests, but the actual love story is between the grandmother and the granddaughter. And it follows their sassy, competitive, loving relationship. And actually, the opening number is the grandmother and granddaughter at each other's throats as they play a game of Scrabble. And here's an excerpt.

You're falling pretty far behind.

That was the best word I could find.

It's such a shame you've got no skill.

I should remove you from the will.

So that song and all the songs are written by Brandon, who did our music, lyrics, and co-wrote the book with me. He is an Ohio native, and he's living in New York now as an actor and writer. But where are you now, Brandon?

Currently, I'm in Pittsburgh for a few months doing Forever Plaid at the Pittsburgh CLO. And this is Gary Jaffe, my book writer, who's Brooklyn-based, and he's a writer and director for film and theater who's originally from Austin, Texas.

It's true, my plays have played all over the nation and my films have played all over the world. Brandon and I met in the BMI Lehman Engel workshop in 2015, and in 2017 we were commissioned to write At First Sight by the Mountain Playhouse of Jennerstown, Pennsylvania. To write this new musical, we decided we wanted to do a love letter to some of our favorite women, our grandmothers and our sisters.

So here are some pictures of the women in our lives. And actually, in the top middle in the purple is my Grandma Pat, who was the inspiration for Grandma Pat the character. There are some differences though. I think Grandma Pat, the real-life one, when she saw it, was a little shocked at how much Grandma Pat the character was drinking during the course of the show.

But, you know, it's musical comedy, so you do what you got to, Grandma. Yeah. What you also see here is an image of our target audience. We think women between the ages of 35 and 75 are really the core group. In fact, I imagine a suburban mom wanting to do something on a Saturday night, and she's gonna buy a ticket for her daughter, buy a ticket for her mother, and all three of them are gonna come see At First Sight together, and they're gonna enjoy the show. And then who knows, maybe they'll spend the evening talking about love and each other, because that's the relationship that's most important to the show.

In fact, the title song, At First Sight, is a love duet between the grandmother and granddaughter, and here's a brief clip from that.

It was love. It was love. At first sight. At first sight.

Okay, now stop before you make a woman cry.

All it took was one look. I saw you and just you. I'd love you till the day I die.

Grandma!

What? Oh, we love our grandmas.

So what do we need in 2020? We need $10,000 to do a 29-hour reading in New York, and we'd love to get a name actress like Christine Ebersole, Tonya Pinkins, or Sandy Duncan, who actually came and saw the premiere of At First Sight and loved it. We'd also love a producer to partner with a company like the Pittsburgh CLO to do a full production of At First Sight later in the year. The Pittsburgh CLO is great. It has this awesome cabaret space, and they're actively looking for small cast musicals like At First Sight for that space.

But the way we really think we're going to get it out to the, out to the whole country for all the regional community houses who can do the show is through a filmed version. We think At First Sight is particularly good for a filmed version because it's a very cinematic script. We use cross-cutting between various dates and scenes and songs to both dramatic and comedic effect. So we think this is a good fit. It's a small show, it's producible, and we want a producing team to help us get this digital filmed distributable version done.

And in the future, we imagine At First Sight playing at regional houses and community theaters all over the country. It can be done anywhere because it's so producible. It's 4 actors, 2 instruments, and a story that appeals to all ages and all demographics. And there is this huge demand for family-friendly musicals that are small cast, like I Love You, You're Perfect, Now Change and Murder for Two, which went on and are currently still be— being done everywhere, including Forever Plaid, which I'm doing right now, which hasn't stopped.

We know this show is universal, and it's special because it's a relationship we've never seen in a musical. That is the love between granddaughter and grandmother. So we would love you to join us as we try to take this very special love story across the nation to small towns and big cities alike. Thank you so much for your time, and we're excited to have your questions.

Ah, now you can breathe.

Questions? You mentioned the premiere production. What did you learn from that as far as audience feedback is concerned, and how is the show— how have you worked that into evolving the show forward?

That's a great question. Well, for one thing, We learned that when you target your show to a particular audience, they tend to respond. And we knew a lot about the community of Jennerstown. This is a lot— it tends to skew older, and there are certain types of humor that they really like and certain types that they don't. When we played those humor buttons, they reacted. We also learned that our second act needed to be tightened and made more real and human, which is what Brad and I love writing. We write real stories, real people, and real good music. So that's what we're working on now as we take the feedback we got from that first production.

Got it.

Yes.

Can you explain more what you're looking for scale-wise and distribution-wise for the film version?

Yeah. So we're following the Apples and Oranges model, which now Apples and Oranges budgets $500,000 for a film distribution model. We could vary that depending on what our scale is, and it's only 4 people, so it's not huge. The idea being, though, that somewhere between that $100 grand and $500 grand is a lot cheaper than an Off-Broadway run and potentially has so much more exposure. So that's what we're looking for financially. And you want to just distribute that digitally?

Is it going on YouTube? Is it— It could go on—

Amazon, it could go on YouTube, it could go on whatever made sense to our producing partners as to who's going to get to our target audience. Our target audience might use Facebook more than they use, you know, any of the other distribution platforms. But that's something that we would want to discuss with the team, especially if the team were more connected to those community theaters and regional theaters and know what they're looking out for.

Great questions. Another—

I might have missed this, but, um, you said that you're, um, looking at 35 to 70-year-old female demographic, which my screen's a little blurry, but neither of you guys look like 35 or 70-year-old females. Um, and so how did you like sort of pick this theme? Is there, you know, are you talking about certain audience survey data? Is there someone on your creative team? And when you talk about moving down the electronic channel in a marketplace that's less likely to take to consume musicals on a channel. That seems like, it seems like a mismatch. It feels like you guys are really moving through anecdotal evidence rather than sort of hard data of demographic. Hmm. There's a lot of questions there.

Yeah, I don't know if I agree necessarily based on the, my grandparents and seeing how they consume media. I mean, they're getting pretty good at using their smartphones and everything. And I could see them, you know, buying, renting it on Amazon or Netflix.

I think something to add here is that the actual audience that most is most valuable to us is the community theaters and regional theaters, because they're the ones who are going to produce it for those communities who are still attending theaters. In some ways we want to use the film model to get to the theater model who will do the play. The Off-Broadway method of getting attention out is breaking. It used to be that you put it abroad, Off-Broadway show, and then that got the attention on the shortlist, so on and so forth. We're inspired by Apples and Oranges model of reinventing that wheel, and we think that we can do that with this film distribution model. So somewhere in, you know, Topeka, Kansas can watch the online thing, say, "Hey, we want to do that show," and then they'll do it with their 4 great actors, and then the show will keep going.

Great, got it. All right, that's it.

Excellent questions and excellent presentation. We're moving on to our next amazing presentation. We have Sam Giannidis, Tony Gonzalez, Frank Cayetti, and Joy Regaliano with "Supportive White Parents." Hi, I'm Joy. That's Sam.

Hi.

That's Tony. Hi, I'm Frank.

And we are Team Supportive White Parents, and we are so excited to talk to you about our show.

Hi, my name is Joy, and both of my parents are doctors, which makes me super Asian. We're Filipino, to be exact. I was supposed to follow in their footsteps and take over my dad's clinic. That shadowy place you see over there was a career in entertainment, of course. When I told my dad I didn't want to be a doctor anymore and that I had switched from pre-med to majoring in theater and Southeast Asian studies, he didn't talk to me for 8 months! When I was at UC Berkeley, I looked around at my theater classmates and I wished that I had supportive white parents like them. And so I eventually wrote a musical called Supportive White Parents. Supportive White Parents is a comedy musical about an Asian American girl who wishes on a shooting star for supportive white parents. I wrote the book and the lyrics, and I'm also in it! This is our team. The show starts at my alma mater, UC Berkeley. All the students are so excited to show their parents how they've changed, except for Joy, because her parents are immigrants, doctors, and Asian. As predicted, they are extremely disappointed that she doesn't want to be a doctor, and they express it in a song called "U Tang Nalo Ob," which colloquially refers to the debt that you owe your parents just by being born. Andrew Leung knows what I'm talking about! Asian classmates! Brrr brrr brrr! Air horns!

We send it through time. I sacrificed so much for you. So now you owe us your life too.

She then wishes on a shooting star for supportive white parents who would understand her and love her for who she is. She wakes up to see Jim and Carol fawning all over her, just the kind of crunchy liberal whole whole food shopping white parents she wanted. At first, these white parents seem perfect, but we start to see their flaws: some racial blind spots, a foul-mouthed incel son, and an aversion to vaccines. Joy is forced to confront the fact that what she wanted isn't necessarily what she really needed. Thematically, Supportive White Parents explores our innate desire to be accepted for being our true selves. On the road to discovering herself, Joy also accepts who her parents are and learns to appreciate them. Along the way, we turn a satirical eye to white privilege, subreddit culture, 2000s pop-punk music, and Whole Foods. It's a comedy with heart and a subversive edge.

We're Sam and Tony, the composers of the show. This show is very producible. It currently only has 6 cast members, and we've put it up in numerous black box style theaters to great success. We've also seen from our run at Upright Citizens Brigade, Second City, and the Hollywood Fringe Festival that it appeals to a large cross-section of people, from Asian Americans to children of immigrants to comedy fans to supportive white parents themselves. We even got a write-up by NBC. We were just extended at Second City Hollywood because we sold out our entire 4-month run. We were nominated for Best Musical at the Hollywood Fringe Festival 2019 and won the Encore Award and Best of Broadwater. Even at this stage of development with small-scale production value, we've garnered industry interest and are fielding various offers from major streaming platforms and theater producers. Immigrant stories have proven to be very successful at the box office, as is evidenced with Hamilton or Coco.

Not to mention, specific representation of Asian Americans has been a smash success. Dolla dolla bills!

Dolla dolla bills!

Asian Americans have been historically underrepresented in TV, film, and stage. Look, I'm allowed to say this because I'm Asian, but a lot of us have money! There's huge growth potential here considering there are not many Asian American musicals to begin with, and those that do exist are largely dramatic and historical. We don't have our Book of Mormon yet. We don't have our contemporary hit musical. And Asian Americans love to laugh just as much as anyone else.

Today, we're asking to be connected with producers and cultivators of theater who would care about sharing a specifically Asian American story, and one that represents immigrants and Filipino culture with respect, humor, and heart. We would also love to engage in partnership with a theater company that could help us develop the full-length version. Such as La Jolla Playhouse or Berkeley Repertory Theatre. We'd also love to garner funding for a 29-hour reading.

Beyond just Asian Americans and immigrants, we can all relate. We all have parents. We all just want to be loved and accepted for who we are. Besides, all parents suck in their own special way.

In their own special way.

Thank you so much for your time, and, um, I'm wearing the same thing, so it's less confusing.

Well, I must say, Joy, from last Friday till now, your team came a very long way. Congratulations on that. Okay, question.

Everybody's still laughing. Alyssa, Alyssa, go ahead.

I mean, Joy and team, how charming was that? And Joy, I loved your performance there on the video. That was great. I guess I'm a little confused. You say it's been produced, but you still need to finish it. So can you be more specific about the state it's in?

Yeah, so we started as a half-hour show because at UCB, that's what the length it needs to be to be put up. And I took a class on how to write a half-hour show. So it started as 30 minutes, and then we kind of went through like UCB, Second City, and Hollywood Fringe Festival. And then Second City was like, oh, would you like to put up an hour version? So then we pulled together another half-hour of material in just a few weeks, and then we put it up, and now it's an hour. And so now we would love for it to like be 90 minutes, a full-length two-act musical. And yeah, that's the state it's in.

Great. Next question.

Um, so sorry. Well, yes, you did an amazing job. Amazian. I love it. It's hilarious. I laughed out loud when I read just the logline of the synopsis. It's hilarious. And I know everybody that I know would love watching it too. Um, so what, so what, what do you already know story-wise what that extra extension of the length would entail.

What do you—

Yeah, oh sorry, I cut you off. Oh, go ahead.

Oh yeah, yeah, we definitely have been brainstorming and we have some ideas. I think it might be fun— right now it doesn't have a second act adventure, like kind of the event that it's building towards. So for like Spelling Bee, it would be the spelling bee, or like in Waitress, it would be like the baby being born and the cook-off. So like maybe like me inviting everyone to my "Come see me in Our Town." In real life, I was in Our Town at UC Berkeley. So like trying to get everyone back, all my parents, the white parents and my Asian parents in the same building at the same time, because, you know, the logic of the show, the shooting star is coming over that at the same time and everyone has to make a sacrifice and, you know, something like that. And then just, yeah, I think there's more room to expand with the characters and give everyone an arc, because right now it's only an hour, so only a few people have an arc.

Good. I have a question.

Joy, can you tell me about the love story? Is, you know, there's a love story in every story, and what's the love story here?

That's a great question. I think, yeah, I mean, I guess right now there's like a platonic love story with the parents, but as far as a romantic one, I think in the expansion it might be fun if like I had an Asian boyfriend in my old life and then I find a white boyfriend. And we've also talked about having little B stories of like, we think the white parents might be secretly super kinky, so they could have like a fun little song there. Yeah. Another thing is the—

ultimately the love story is really about acceptance and loving yourself for who you are and your parents for who they are. So it is not necessarily romantic love, but it is a very important familial love. Yes, thumbs up.

All right, that was super fun. We're going to our 5th team now. We are going to turn it over to Matthew Green and Kira Stone with their musical Carry Me.

Kira, you're muted.

Thank you. Hello, my name is Kira Stone and I am a composer and lyricist.

Hi, my name is Matthew Green and I am a playwright and librettist.

And today we're really excited to talk to you about our new musical "Carry Me." Here is a chorus of one of the opening numbers of the show. <LYRICS>When the day's wrapped up and tied with a ribbon</LYRICS> I leave a little worse for wear and then I shuffle home.

I file it all away, every word they say is saved, and every day it starts to look the same.

So Carry Me tells the story of Jamie, who's a young professional therapist. He takes on a new and challenging patient named Adam. Adam is a troubled teenager who stirs up painful memories for Jamie. As Jamie is struggling in his work, in his role as a new father, and in his own efforts to deal with his past trauma. Jamie does his best to help those around him, but ultimately he realizes that in order to take care of Adam and the others, he first has to take care of himself.

Carry Me features an acoustic-based contemporary pop-rock score that lives in the universe of Next to Normal and Dear Evan Hansen. I composed the score start to finish on my Martin guitar, my baby, mere weeks after I gave birth to my actual baby, who's my daughter, and she's now a very talkative, scarily smart 2-year-old who woke me up this morning at 4 AM having a blast.

And I personally dove into this project shortly after becoming a foster father to a teenage son of my own and really sharing in our protagonist Jamie's desire to help others along with sort of the missteps and failures that he has along the way.

The piece we wrote as a result is deeply personal to both of us and a human story of growth, struggle, and ultimately of hope.

And with that in mind, Carry Me has enormous potential to connect to a wider audience. So already anecdotal responses from early table reads that we've had indicate that Jamie's journey resonates really deeply with young adults and parents, and that Adam's story really touches younger audience members, and that the score and structure connect with fans of traditional and contemporary musical theater alike. So this means the piece will bring in new passionate audience members while still appealing broadly to traditional ticket buyers with a vibrant musical theater score, including this song.

I choose you, I choose you, every funny face you give me, I see colors turquoise, gold, strawberry blue. I choose you every second, every The good, the bad, the worst parts, I choose you.

For investors and producers, this is an extremely exciting time to join Team Carrie Mae because all of the awesomeness is ahead of us. An article in Playbill recently highlighted the trend of putting mental health issues center stage in Broadway musicals and the incredible audience response to these powerful stories.

Two recent examples of this phenomenon are Next to Normal and Dear Evan Hansen. Which recouped their investments within their first year on Broadway and continued turning profits throughout their runs and national tours. "Carry Me" is poised to follow this trend with a new and unique perspective on these powerful themes.

We know that audiences are hungry to see shows that deal with mental health, have a pop-infused theatrical score, that are contemporary, and that showcase vulnerability onstage.

And for more good news, we already know what our next step is because "Carry Me" has been selected as the only musical to be workshopped through the Live Read at SDA program at USC coming up in February 2020. So this program has a really fantastic track record for preparing shows for commercial production, including the show "Emojiland," which started there and is opening next month in a major Off-Broadway production at the Duke.

From Live Read, we're gonna work together as a team to refine our material and put together a 29-hour reading and industry presentation in New York City next summer to present this piece to commercial producers and regional theaters. We are currently in talks with a fantastic female director who we're totally willing to tell you more about if you decide to work on this project with us, but for privacy reasons, we just wanna keep the name hush-hush right now. And she is, possibly going to direct this reading that we're having. We're having a meeting with her in January, in a couple weeks, to hash out all the details.

Yeah, this director was actually our artistic matchmaker. She introduced me and Kira to work on "Carry Me" in the first place. So she's shown continued interest in the project. It's been great having a Broadway director in our orbit who is interested in working on this with us. And we're enthusiastic about the possibility of adding her to team Team Carry Me, joining me, Kira, and you. So today we're asking for a committed investment of $10,000 for next summer's 29-hour reading in New York City to continue developing this unique and powerful musical. And speaking of which, Kira, do you want to play us out?

Hell yeah! I can see it now. We'll pack up your old Subaru, let the gas pedal kiss the ground.

I can see us, oh, a million miles away from the life we have today. Let's go, let's go. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Questions?

I thought that was a great presentation. Thank you both for putting yourselves out there and sharing with us about you and who you are, and also giving us some really clear paths to what the show is going— what the show wants, what the investment is like, and what the investor can look forward to in terms of the data that you provided. With the success of Dear Evan Hansen and Next to Normal. That was great. I'm just— could you tell me a little bit more, or tell all of us a little bit more about the size of this musical, the scope of it? Cast number, kind of the choreography that you see coming into the piece. Just give us a little more detail about that.

I'm just curious about that. Yeah, I can. So the cast size is currently 6 actors. It is 3 male-identifying and 3 female-identifying characters. So it's a small cast. We see it as something that's very producible and can live in various— in small intimate chamber type productions, as well as something that can be expanded and live on a larger scale. So there is opportunity for movement. There's opportunity for inventive, exciting staging, which we saw in Come From Away that was such a big part of that show's success. So I think the show we've created leaves a lot of room for creativity with how it lives in various spaces.

Thank you. Good job, you guys.

Okay, next question please.

Great presentation, loved the live musical touch as well as the personal connections, so nicely done there. Um, who would you think about for a dream cast?

Oh man, I have like so many options in my head already. Um, honestly, for Jamie personally, I would love to see Leslie Odom Jr. That's just my take. I think he would be so excellent.

Matthew, what about you? Yeah, we actually— it's fun because Kira and I— this is such a great question— Kira and I have this sort of text thread going back and forth where we've at different times thrown out different names. The character actually of Jamie, when she said Leslie Odom Jr.'s name, I I got really excited about that. And yeah, there's— there's— now I'm blanking on the names. That's something that we can definitely chat about more offline, especially as we sort of approach some, some more opportunities where we'll need to be drawing on those names, those people.

We also have a character named Tori who's kind of a 20-something off-the-wall character. She's really funny, and she's kind of figuring out life in a big city.

I think she could be played really well by Eva Noblezada.

She was recently— she was in Hadestown as Eurydice. She's excellent. Her vocals are insane. She's so talented.

I'm tempted to ask what the director's name rhymes with, but I won't, so we'll ask her that one later.

Okay, okay, we have time for one more question.

All right, then let's move on. Thank you so much, Matthew and Kyra. Thank you. Next we have Anne Nygren Doherty and Mark Mendelson presenting Gold Rush 2.0.

I'm Mark Mendelsohn.

I'm Anne Nigro-Andoherty. We hope to blow your mind with Gold Rush 2.0, a 4-person musical comedy with a hip electronic score that uses disarming humor to explore deception, prospectively deep issues of the heart and allows audiences to laugh at how technology is changing the world.

In it, 22-year-old dropout Ashley lies her way into a job at Borneo, a travel app startup. She's desperate to pay off her college debt and care for the sick mom who raised her alone. That's how I give back.

I wanna give back.

Ashley's boss is Josh, a child of Silicon Valley. His job title is Wild Man of Borneo.

As my dad once said to Steve Jobs—

Your dad knew Steve Jobs? Don't ask.

On vacation in Borneo, Josh's girlfriend dumped him, and he got the idea to create a disruptive app to eliminate all pain points in the travel biz.

He's helped by shy coder Andrew, who fled the trauma of his family farm in India. He copes through video games and secretly likes Ashley.

The three team up to develop their app, pitch investors, and make Borneo a household word.

Their story is framed as Gold Rush 2.0, a corporate musical presented by rockstar VC turned CEO Jules Hammer at the annual expo of corporate giant Mediocratech.

That's Media Crytek, Mark. In Gold Rush 2.0, the team was so focused on eliminating customer pain points in changing the future, they suppress their own needs. After some success, Borneo implodes, splitting up the team and throwing Josh into emotional collapse. He realizes he created a travel app to avoid taking a painful inner journey after the loss of his father and first love.

I'm human, I'm human, and being human isn't easy.

CEO Jules Hammer The owner, pained by a terrible singing voice, is so impressed by the team that when he takes over Media Krytek, he reunites them to launch an app that teaches him to sing and makes pain shareable by turning emotion to song.

Hi, I'm Anne. Goldrush 2.0 was inspired by my unique family life in the Bay Area. My husband left film production for tech startups and then spent 20 years in tech research. This is the prototype for for what would become Google Street View. He and two coworkers built it with their own hands. And me, like Ashley, my mother became seriously ill when I was 14, and that hardwired me into being a person who would strive to eliminate pain. That's when I decided to become a theater artist and make my mission turn pain to beauty. Inventors take pain and they turn it into comfort and ease, and sometimes they even save lives. And there's great beauty be in that, and that's why I wrote Gold Rush 2.0.

I'm Mark, a Bay Area composer and set designer. I seek to create shows that balance a reverence for the past with an eye on the future. The sound of Gold Rush 2.0 blends modern pop, electronic, and dubstep in a youthful sound that reflects the caffeinated, upbeat, computer-driven world of our show. I love satire that has both a heart and a brain and is ultimately optimistic. As an award-winning set designer, I've I've brought to life over 100 musicals, giving me a unique perspective on visual storytelling.

We make a great team.

As a producer, writer, and performer, Anne makes sure the story is funny, touching, uplifting, and memorable.

As a composer and designer, Mark dazzles the audience with catchy tunes and stunning visual moments, all of which can be realized in any size venue. Gold Rush 2.0 has had 3 readings, and we've demoed 8 songs. Because the story about bringing people together must be live. Our dream is a Broadway-caliber production incorporating the latest in performance capture technology, but we're open to any means of sharing our story with an audience. In 2020, we seek to grow an audience in advance of production by creating and releasing music videos on YouTube and SoundCloud, supported by Facebook and Instagram posts. Superfan Sam tops our list. She's a socially conscious computer support person who kicks back with girlfriends on the weekends. She relates to Ashley and is uplifted by our message.

What would you do if you had a million dollars?

Well, not a million dollars.

Give me the exact dollar amount.

I mean $800K.

We're not asking for a million dollars yet, but we are looking for a collaboration. Collaborative producing partner who shares our vision, who will help us develop our audience and think creatively about the future.

To learn more, email us and we'll provide you with a select link to our script, score, and our future growth plan.

Come join our team of inventors. In the words of Jules Hammer, everyone has a song in their heart that's just bursting to get out.

And we would love to take your questions.

I thought that was really a fun pitch. It was fast-moving. You guys were very prepared. And what I loved about it is the story was fully formed, you know, beginning, middle, and end. And it was very genuine. And just hearing the word dubstep step kind of made me feel good. I haven't heard that word in a little while. But, you know, it felt like there were a couple of different places for this project to be further developed. I don't know if you're familiar with the Ohio Playwrights Conference, but that might be a fit, you know, to look into that with Robert Egan. And Deborah, you've been my guest here, so, in Ohio, and you know how fun that is. I guess I don't really have a question. It was just an observation, but I feel like you're really well on your way, and the music felt very vibrant and really engaging. Thank you so much.

Okay, next question, please. All right, I guess We've got all the questions we need then.

Apparently you were very informative and thorough in your presentation. Thank you. Great, that's what we want. Well done, well done. We'll move on to our next presenters. And Jorge Rivera Herranz, also known as Jay, will tell us about Stupid Humans.

Hello everybody, my name is Jorge Miguel Rivera Herranz. Most people just call me Jay.

Hi everybody, I'm Matt Hawkins.

And together we are the musical creation duo known as Hawkins and Jay. Now before we get started, I want to show you guys a quick cover of one of the songs from our musical. The song is called "What Does My Heart Say?" Follow your heart, they say.

Do what you love and you won't work a day. Follow your dreams, they preach. Same old lesson, so easy to teach. What about those who don't get a choice? Decisions made for us since we were little boys. Spending our lives with a voice inside, thinking maybe Maybe I should try. I don't know, I'm unsure what my future's gonna be, but I know this: I can't stand around and let it pass by me. I am young, still got time. Should I stay and wait and see, or should I change?

<LYRICS>—change my life for me.</LYRICS> Okay, so what you guys just saw was a small snippet of our original musical called Stupid Humans. Now, Stupid Humans is about a young man named Indigo who drops out of med school against the wishes of his father so that he can pursue his lifelong dream of becoming a singer and songwriter. Now, I came to Matt Hawkins with this idea the day that I dropped out of pre-med, without telling my parents so that I could pursue my lifelong dream of becoming a singer and an actor.

Yeah, that conversation with the parents went really well. Thanks for that. No. So then I took this idea and I took it to my faculty at University of Notre Dame, and I said, hey, we've got the next Lin-Manuel Miranda here on campus. He's got a story to tell, and we should tell it. And so then after I tricked— no, persuaded— I persuaded faculty. That's the word. I persuaded our faculty The following year, we produced this new musical as part of our main stage season.

Now, before we continue, I want to show you guys a quick clip from our production of Superhumans. This is the opening number, and it's basically our main character Indigo showing you how he really feels about his life in medicine.

There he is, the prodigy of cardiology. That never gets old.

Oh, you'd be surprised. You're gonna walk in there tomorrow looking like the future, Indigo.

I'm not so sure about that.

Okay, I lied. I hate this job. I really freaking hate this job, and there's no one on the mother-loving face of the planet to make me stay. Thanks for this job.

Only reason I have this job, father told me to get this job. Demand of the land, authoritarian life in med school to advance in monetary advancement. I don't think it's all about the money, and it's kind of funny. I think everybody's got a hobby that they love.

Think about it, every time I step up into med school, all I really want to do is sing or write songs. Yes, I'm depressed, I confess, incessantly pressed for success, 'cause success should be selfless. Fine. So where do I draw the line?

So all of our performances at Notre Dame sold out. We actually had to add an extra performance, and when we did, we put the tickets on sale, they sold out in less than 1 minute. 34 seconds. Yes, 34 seconds to be exact. Thank you, Jay. So the reason why this musical was so popular on campus and it's going to make a huge difference is because it does not show the next generation being cynics or complainers. It actually shows them being full of joy and having hope and full of optimism. And right now in this world, right now in this world the way it is, seeing this show gives me hope that I think we're gonna be just fine. So also right now, before we let you go, we have two announcements right here live. One, we just received a very substantial creative research grant from the University of Notre Dame. And this is going to allow us to take our musical to the next level and continue to develop it. Part of that is we're going to have in Chicago, August 2020, a huge staged reading presentation. We'll get you all the details. You're all invited. Well, maybe not everybody at home. Well, yeah, yeah, sure, everybody. We're going to do that, uh, in, in August. Uh, we'll get you all the details later. And then also, live right here, we are announcing we are changing the title of our musical. We're going to test it out. We're going to see how everybody feels about it, and you'll see that title at the end of this next video, which is clips of our production at the University of Notre Dame.

Enjoy!

I'm out.

So we invite all of you to Chicago. August 2020. We'll get you the details. Meet us, see the work, and let's chat and see what, uh, see what happens.

It'll be so fun.

Thank you, everybody. Thank you.

All right, questions about the show or the team or Jason?

Great presentation. Um, It's very— I like your new title, by the way. It feels like really in line with the heart of the show. And, uh, yeah, I was wondering if you could tell us a little bit more about some of the other characters who help flesh this out.

Yeah, that is very—

a lot of the central conflict. So the father is against the, uh, the main character actually going and following his dream. So we follow his track and his relationship with the son throughout, and then their journey changes at the very end. Some of the other characters is on, uh, on the way to— basically the main character goes out to California, and on his trip out to California he meets other people that are also following their dreams and trying to go after their passion. And he meets a character named Clara, and through Clara she's also trying— she has some challenges at home with her parental figure. So we have this other kind of B story where she has a conversation with her mother and they're having challenges in their relationship. So there's a mirror between the parent and the child. And then the Indigo character and Clara character have this platonic relationship that starts to get a little fuzzy. We think it might go romantic, and then where something's revealed in the end. And then there's other people along the way. There's this Sage character that is the conductor that moves people from the train from wherever they are in the country out to California, and then other tertiary characters in the music. Business.

Great. Next question.

How big was the— is the cast size and orchestra size in an ideal world?

Right now we could do the show between 12 and 16 performers depending, and when it comes to the orchestra, we can do it with one person who acts as the DJ as well as the piano player.

And what about on the large-scale end of that?

Large-scale, I mean, you could go—

we could go up over 16 cast members if that was of interest. More the merrier on my end. As far as the orchestra, we are interested in actually depending on the patches as far as the technical stuff goes, like, it might be really fun to get live strings and live brass. And part of our development next year is going to be workshopping that, to see what live instruments complement the more electronic hip-hop bass. So we're kind of open to that conversation.

Thanks.

And Matt, can you tell me who your target audience is exactly? Like, describe your perfect ticket buyer.

Well, our perfect ticket buyer are going to be 13 to 35, and mostly targeted much more into the junior high, high school. Jay, you told a great story about, uh, what you wish you knew before you went into pre-med. What was that story?

Yeah, so, um, all I knew is that, like, I knew what I always wanted to do, which was actually, like, singing and acting. Um, but, you know, when there's so many kids who I know are growing up or in high school right now who are on a trajectory, a career trajectory that is kind of placed on them either by their parents or their teachers or someone, and what's great about the message of the show is that it kind of gives it's sending the message that I wish I had heard when I was younger, which is really follow your heart and don't give up on your dreams. So that kind of same demographic of students, whether it's high school or like even early college students, could really be affected by this in a good way.

Yeah, and what's fascinating, we had a talk back after one of our productions at Notre Dame and was really fascinating. We had an older gentleman who was retired from the South Bend community sitting next to a young college female-identified student, and they had obviously completely different experiences but connected to it. And yes, the young woman said, which was in line with Jace, thoughts is she— it gives her power, it empowers her to go after the thing that she wants. And then right next to her, the 70-year-old male gentleman said that it really reminded him that he gave up on his dreams when he had grandchildren, because now his dreams need to be his grandchildren's dreams. And there's— because of the father character in the show, it's a very working-class family and father— there's a lot of connection too for the parents. So we feel like it's for the younger audience, but it's one of those shows where the parents and the grandparents are gonna be just as invested as their kids.

Alyssa, you had a question?

Yeah, I feel like now I have two questions, but the first question is that was such a— first of all, it was terrific. And that rap number that you showed us was so compelling and like so amazing. Can you tell us more, just tell us more about the musical style, kind of bigger picture? Are all the numbers like that? The last one seemed quite different. Maybe describe that a little bit more.

So I think the best way to describe the music of the show, because it is relatively broad, but I would say it all falls under pop music. Like, I'm very inspired by songs I hear on the radio. As you can tell, it's not very classic musical theater sounding songs. Like, there are— I'm obviously influenced by Hamilton and Lin-Manuel, but also just like by current pop songs that we hear on the radio today. So in there you will hear like classic hip-hop beats, but you'll also hear just like ballads that have tons of voices coming in as an ensemble. So yeah, I would say the best way to categorize it would be a pop musical.

Great. All right.

Can I ask my second question? Is there not time?

Sure, go ahead. Go for it.

Because when, I think it was Cindy asked you about the target market, I was a little concerned maybe because those younger folks aren't the ones who are really buying the tickets, but then I feel like you sort of expanded, Matt, you sort of expanded it out and that's, good, but when you think about marketing it to those different ages, they may enjoy it in the theater, that 7-year-old may enjoy it in the theater, but is that 7-year-old going to be able to come? Is he going to know it's for him?

I think that's a, that's a great, that's a great question. I think we should take that and see how we can, uh, infuse that into some of the marketing.

So thank you for that. Yeah, 13 to 35-year-olds don't tend to have the money, so for the ticket buy.

Very true. Well, thank you so much for that great presentation. And we have last but not least, our last presenter with his show, Khan the Musical. Please meet Brent Black.

Hi, I'm Brent Black, and I've written the Star Trek parody musical called After 10 years of making nerds happy on YouTube with comedy songs about video games, I'm returning to my musical theater roots and setting my sights on another fandom I'm a part of: Trekkies! At the top of the show, Data the android has entangled himself in a diplomatic crisis, and soon the fate of the galaxy rests squarely upon the success of his self-made holographic musical based on— You guessed it, The Wrath of Khan. Now he and Captain Picard have one night to fix the show before they present it to a menacing alien ambassador who happens to be a huge Broadway nerd. The show within a show finds a schlubby older James T. Kirk pulled into a deadly game of cat and mouse when his arch-nemesis Khan, who's a bit more glamorous than you remember him, breaks free of imprisonment. Some of the standout moments in the show include an opening number narrated by data, a flashback to Kirk's past in the psychedelic 2260s, a pioneer of the final frontier, Earth year 2266.

Now the '60s around a size of that planet we hastily stranded them on, and their leader— what was his name?

Keith? Kippy? Khan, that's what it was.

Khan.

A cadet finally achieving his dream of a heroic death.

For one shining moment, this boy boldly went— went nowhere.

A musicalization of Star Trek's most iconic movie moment. A chorus of mutant space chickens.

And once me dead, and a son who wouldn't even care if I were.

Thank you. I'm so late.

And the bittersweet moment Spock sacrifices himself to save the ship. Jim, I have been and shall always be your friend. And as your friend, I have a thought.

Live long and prosper, for I cannot.

But don't worry, at the last minute Data decides to reinstate his original upbeat version of the finale, reminding the audience of the fact that Spock wasn't dead for long, he died but Not for long! Over the course of 3 readings, Khan has succeeded in making audiences literally laugh and cry, and now we're looking to take it to the next level. But first, some quick facts: it runs about 110 minutes over 2 acts, the cast accommodates a gender and race diverse group of at least 10, but it's expandable to over 30, and one way to keep running costs low would be the use of our professional professionally arranged backing tracks. But why this, and why now? Well, with the Star Trek film hiatus and mixed reception for its latest series, fans of this super iconic franchise are hungry for new content to feed that nostalgia. Star Trek conventions still comprise a multi-million dollar industry, and it only takes a quick Google search to see that the cottage industry of fan-made merchandise is a booming business. Meanwhile, in the theater world, parody shows based on popular franchises are experiencing a bona fide golden age. And according to my market research, there is a surprising amount of crossover in the demographics of musical theater nerds and Star Trek nerds. According to a survey of 5,000 self-proclaimed Trekkies, a slim majority are women and their average age is about 40. Compare that to the Broadway League's numbers from 2018. Again, among Broadway theatergoers, a slim majority are women women, and their average age is about 40. After 3 developmental readings, what this show needs is a chance to be developed on its feet. Today I'm asking for $25,000 to mount a 3-week workshop culminating in a minimalist production. My goal is to get as many eyes and ears on this thing as possible, and that could include anything from Off-Broadway to Vegas to a movie theater Fathom event to a streaming Netflix movie and beyond. The time is right, The audience is built in, and it's designed to have broad appeal. With your help, I'm hoping to make this show live long and prosper. Thank you.

And, uh, that was it. We're opening up— we, me, opening up for questions. Thanks for watching. Hello.

So before I ask the question, I will say, you know, we are in the presence of a Star Trek celebrity.

I do indeed, yes. I've, I've already dropped her name over the course of the last 2 weeks.

Um, uh, obvious question: copyrights, royalties, licensing for the—

you're getting pretty close to— great question. So I've got a two-pronged approach to that. Uh, I'm in contact with as many people as I can find that are involved in, uh, these other parody shows of franchises owned by big movie and TV companies, asking how they did it. In fact, I found out that a recent Big Bang Theory Off-Broadway show had a Star Trek character, is also owned by a parent company of Star Trek, and we'll just say they got away with it, so that's a good sign. But I'm also working with an IP lawyer and have been from the beginning, just to make sure this is as ironclad as you can get when it comes to legally parodying.

I liked it. I mean, I'm a huge Galaxy Quest fan, so I thought it was really interesting to me. It was kind of like Galaxy Quest meets Rocky Horror Picture Show meets Con in a weird way. Maybe that was just the Con character. But I was wondering if you thought of going to somebody like Kirk Thatcher. I think he directed Con the movie, but I know he did some stuff with Leonard Nimoy, and he's an old industrial light and magic guy. As somebody who would bring it to life as a musical, or that those old Star Trek directors from the Star Trek features, you know, they could finesse the way to IP.

Yeah, I haven't thought of that. I mean, at this point, um, I'm trying to get the show really good before, uh, which it is pretty good, but I want to get it really good before any of the copyright holders really catch wind. Uh, I'm, I think sliding into home soon, but that's a good thought to get in touch with those people.

So thank you.

Brett, where did you do the other workshops that you've got in your pitch footage? Where did all that happen and what was the structure of that?

So the first one was I actually borrowed a Shakespeare company in Cincinnati, the Cincinnati Shakespeare Company, and they to this day are the best cast when it comes to the Star Trek technobabble, getting their their mouths around the words. But that was done at the Know Theatre in Cincinnati in March. And then I did a 29-hour reading in New York. Unfortunately, I don't have any footage of that because of Equity rules. And the third one that was the most fleshed out, the one with the costumes that you saw in the footage, was the Philadelphia Fringe Festival.

Ah, okay. Great presentation, by the way. It was really good. Thank you.

Okay, Lori, you're on mute. Let's, I'll unmute you. Okay, you're live, Laura. There we go.

Bren, great presentation. I really liked your style of presentation and felt like it really conveyed your tone really well. It was very funny. And while I was watching it, I had this burning question, which was, will the Trekkie audience cross over to Broadway? Addressed that really briefly, but I didn't quite get it. And I was wondering if you could talk a little bit more about that.

Well, that's a great question. I would open that up to ask, is it a Broadway show? Let's assume it is. If it is, Trekkies are, you know, there's a common misconception that Trekkies are nerds in, nerds that are men in their 20s or 30s. When in fact it does skew female, it does skew college educated, it does skew skew middle to upper class. And so while I don't know if it's, you know, exactly hand in glove, I was sort of pleased to find out that the median age is around 40. And it, you know, both the Broadway theatergoer community and the self-proclaimed Trekkie community, according to a cohort of 5,000 people at least in the survey, also skews similarly female.

All right, actually you have a crossover reference for inside jokes to capture your Seinfeld fans as well in there.

I want them all. Lots of crossover jokes.

Okay, that takes us to all of our 8 teams. Great job everybody in your pitch. I've got a few minutes now if anybody wants to ask ask any one of the 8 shows a follow-up question while you look back at your list before you do your final tabulations. That'll give you a chance to see if— Tim, can you hear me okay? Yes, we can, Frank.

Go for it. Okay. Supportive white parents. Kind of walk me through again what you're looking for in your ask and the why of that.

Uh, yeah, feel free to jump in, Sam, Tony, or Frank, but I think we were hoping for, um, to be connected to people who would really care about this, like a producer-type figure, people who resonate with immigrant stories, Asian American, or who, or who, um, have parent issues too.

Um, and then we were hoping to do a workshop reading to develop the full, um, the full-length version since currently it's 60 minutes, so we would love to put up a reading In addition to summarize for you, Joy, you're looking for somebody to help guide you on the way, a producer, but you're also looking for that to be development of the creative aspect of the show, which means enough resources to have the time to do that.

Yeah, yeah, a space and, um, all of that. Yes, great.

This is so nice that, like, I want people with empathy for parent, parent issues and so forth. No, you want people with Money and connections. That's what we're looking for. Don't just cut straight to it.

That makes sense.

In that ask, is there a specific dollar amount? Because I think what Jonathan just said, that hits it, but I'm— I didn't really understand what it would take to get you through that.

Uh, thus far we've done everything quite, uh cheaply, and so on a very small budget. So we're not necessarily, uh, feeling like we have to do an equity read, which might give us some leeway in cost as well as resources.

Frank, you'd like $10,000 to $25,000?

$10,000 to $25,000. Always have your number, guys. Be ready.

Program doesn't end after these weeks, as you can tell. All right, any other, other questions for any of our teams?

Uh, yeah, I want to go back. Sorry again, the Carry Me group, same, same question.

Yeah, okay, I think our initial ask is $10K for a 29-hour reading to take place this summer in New York City that will culminate in the reading and an industry presentation, probably helmed by our Broadway female director who is working with us right now. She's really fantastic and awesome.

Great.

$10K to $25K. And then last but not least, Game Show, you did a good job on your ask there, but tell me, walk me through again some of the alternatives when you were talking about the channels and things like that. What are the economics of that in what you're trying to So is that for game development?

Yeah. Yeah. Um, so yeah, we've looked— I think we're trying to build the brand right now. I, I'm not— it's not necessarily about breaking even on the initial distribution. Now we could— $50,000 is enough that we could create the first season as a web series and try and sell it to a platform. But I think for us, we're, we're trying to build it to something bigger so that with that $50,000 and that show, if we get 40 million views on YouTube, then it's easier for us to ask for that next round of $500,000 to make an actual Netflix film, right? And I don't, I don't, I don't want to make that jump yet until we have more, until we have a bigger, until we have bigger showing. So I think that $50,000 would be an investment to own a portion of the brand, a portion of the, of the show, with the expectation that we would have to do a second raise in 2021 that would partially be a raise, could also be a Patreon, could also be a Kickstarter. But I think the first step— Video Game High did the same thing where they built a following and then they raised $200,000 for Video Game High because they already had a big YouTube following. So this is, this is just the first step, and I think there's gonna be a next step before we actually are generating real revenue.

But the answer to your question is the $50,000 is to give you your proof of concept, and then it could go up to $500,000 for the actual And one more point, never say to investors like, we don't necessarily have a break-even.

We intend to lose your money. So don't say that.

Yeah. Oh, okay. And for what it's worth, I've actually run a company before. I took $10,000 of my dad's money and $10,000 of my own and we made, I don't know, it was a million, we made millions of dollars with the company, but I've also spent almost all of it now.

Andrew, stop at, I took a company and made it.

Honestly, honestly, there's that rule, which is when you're in a hole and you keep digging, someone has to take the shovel from you.

On that note, let's give our sharks a minute or two to tabulate their thoughts. And while we're doing that, we have an extra presentation. We've had a 9th team that's been joining us for the last 2 weeks, and they're in a very early developmental stage of their project. And instead of really being a full-baked idea with a full script yet, they have a really interesting platform idea, a way of merging technology and theater, and I would like for them to present that to you. So here is Alyssa Landry and Kira Benzing.

Hi everyone, I'm Kira Benzing, and thank you for this time. Yes, we are the bonus group here right now. I am a director and I have a specialty in virtual reality directing, and I'm the founder of Double Eye Studios in New York City, and my creative partner is Alyssa Landry.

Hi everyone, I'm Alyssa Landry. I have just moved back to the United States from Paris, France, where I was writing musicals and writing and directing live entertainment for Disneyland Paris, and then moved over into writing narratives for immersive technologies. And together we are Double Eye Studios.

So, all of the work that we are doing right now is really merging virtual reality And that is special because we can build these productions in New York City, but they can be watched anywhere through new technology.

Our work is always interactive and immersive, and it must contain 3 key ingredients.

We believe in the power of social connection. VR can be a solitary experience, and so we're exploring on how to make it a collective experience.

We want to embrace the themes of empowerment, connection, and choice in a way that allows audiences to experience a wide range of emotions, but is also just downright fun.

And most of all, we want them to have a unique, one-of-a-kind experience that they won't find anywhere else. So our team has designed stories that combine heart with technology, working with the latest technologies from Intel Studios Volumetric Capture all the way to Bose AR.

In the virtual reality landscape, there's a lack of high-quality, immersive, story-driven content where an audience can experience a meaningful story together. In traditional theatre, there can often be a lack of understanding about how to integrate technology in a meaningful way. And of course, the immersive theatre space is exploding, and it includes experiences not just of theatre, but also games, and escape rooms. And right smack in the middle of that is an opportunity.

And that's where we come in. We propose merging the live theater world and the virtual reality world by bringing people together for uplifting experiences. We want to create a new theater where remote people have access to great stories as well as Broadway talent, and we can bring both audiences together in new and undiscovered ways. You can think of us as Sleep No More meets Dreamscape Immersive meets Refinery29's 29 Rooms.

We began exploring this concept this summer with Loveseat, which was in competition at the Venice International Film Festival. So this gives you just a little taste of what we're talking about.

I've never met anyone like you, Perfect Partner.

You're like an electric blanket plugged into the sun.

I will transform into a colossus of organization to protect you. My shield of preparedness.

Let's fly!

Don't fly the perfect partner over a portal to another dimension!

Are you nuts?

Our new show is about a modern-day Pandora whose life changes forever when she discovers a locked box in her grandmother's attic. It is an interactive one-act musical where virtual and real-life audiences uncover the story together.

We are re-envisioning the character of Pandora as a strong woman, one who can write her own destiny. And we're exploring this in new ways to bring our two live audiences together through meaningful connection.

Our live audience will be location-based and fully immersed in our story world thanks to projection domes. And the audience will be able to interact with both the story and with the virtual audience. The virtual audience will be hosted on a dedicated social VR platform and can connect from anywhere in the world. And again, they will be able to interact with the story world and the live audience.

And here's where we need your help. We are looking for forward-thinking producers, people who want to push the bounds of storytelling and create a new medium. We're looking for angel investors who believe in our vision. Venture capitalists who want to sell tickets, and real estate developers who want to have an impact on their community.

Thank you for listening.

Do you have any questions?

Any quick questions for Alyssa or Kira? We have time for about one, one question. All right, then, then we're going to dive right in. We have seen our presentations and our judges have tallied up their virtual dollar spend, and we'd love to hear from each of you. We're going to start in backwards order, and that means Laura, you are up first. Can you please tell us where you're going to spend your virtual dollar?

Oh, sorry, we unmuted you. Great, thank you. Yes, I have decided that I want to put my virtual dollar towards support of white parents. And can you hear me okay?

Yeah, we can hear you. You know, you can, you can divide it up. You have that choice.

To— I want to give it all.

She wants to go all in.

All right, fantastic.

All right, well, thank you.

Sorry, go ahead, Laura, you were going to finish up.

All right, um, do we—

are we each just—

do we go into reasons why? Absolutely. Yeah, I really, um, I just thought the story had, and Joy herself had a quirky humor that I really identified with. And it felt like a story that is very relevant right now. It had so much humor. And I thought that their goal of getting to La Jolla or Burbank perfect. I think that there's a really big audience for it, and I'm excited to see it happen.

All right, excellent.

Well, thank you so much, Laura. Next we have Jonathan. This is going to be interesting.

Why is that?

Because I know you, Jonathan.

Well, I got to live up to it. All right, so I believe in the power of diversification, and it's the holidays, so I was gonna give money to support white parents, but you got so much in the first one that I'm gonna have to, Laura's gonna take the load. Sherlock, I start off with, I did feel that was, I liked the, I thought the catchy, it was a catchy trailer. I thought it built trends on current musicals. I liked the fact that it was data-driven. It does seem, and this is a 2-minute look, this seems the furthest along. One sort of comment I'd have, and maybe this is a change in how you all are coaching or so forth, I felt like a lot of these presentations today were not sort of finished presentations. They were sort of performed live, and they were sort of bits and pieces and a lot of talking, which I think is nice, but you got 2 minutes to sort of wow me in this, in this case. And so I thought it just leaves the impression that some of these things are much more nascent and just need a little seed capital to move along. Whereas something like Sherlock looks like it's getting close to being ready for a fairly significant size investment. So that's 40 cents. Game— I sort of put Game Developer: The Musical and Gold Rush sort of into the same bucket. You're both sort of going to move down the same theme. I did one about like rights to Nintendo and some of the things you make fun of, but I just feel like it's the marketing I'm concerned is too nichey in terms of the market size and the ability to really sort of get a return on capital. 'Cause what I found is having a son who's a game geek, they don't do much besides play the games rather than watching musicals and paying for them. So, but I'll give you 5 cents to sort of try to move your idea along. At first sight, I just don't think you guys are in the demographic. I don't know that you're quite, quite gonna get it, but I'll give you 5 cents. And I, Kim, I wanna especially note that I think Sandy Duncan looks great.

So she's doing well.

Only Tim and I get that joke. Supportive white parents. I'm doing sort of the other side of this because I think that in this day and age, in this current environment of excessive political correctness, and you cannot offend me. I'm virtually a boomer, I'm a 50-something-year-old white male. Everyone makes fun of me. I'm not offended, but I think your theme is pretty— can get— puts you into nichey of a sort of fringe, second city market and not sort of a mainstream market. So I'm not sure that— so, you know, I don't— you're not Hamilton and Coco, like, you're not sort of like this sort of ethnicity theme. It's sort of much more satirical. Like, I don't even know if you could make Book of Mormon these days because everybody just gets offended. So, um, I hope I'm— I hope I'm actually wrong about that, but as an investor, I would be cautious. Carry Me, it's just early days. You know, I think in your pitch, 5 cents to get some seed capital. I would sort of just say, when you think about like who wants to see your show, like I would say people looking, you know, are hungry for shows about with mental health themes. Like you don't open the New York Times and go, God, I really want to find a show about mental health themes. It's like, I want to find a great human story, right? It just happens to be. And so in your pitch, don't like niche yourself down too much. Gold Rush, I think tech startup. I think it was more broader based. Themes, that's 15 cents. Let's look further along. Stupid Humans or My Heart Says Go, starting early days again, 5 cents. The rapping's too— it's too fast for me, but that's, you know, because I'm old. And then, and then Con the Musical. As someone who lives so close to Disney World that I can hear the fireworks, I never underestimate how much people will pay for the Star Wars, Harry Potter, Star Trek franchises, and Trekkies are in the prime demographic of having discretionary income. I think the rights are gonna be difficult, but I don't think you can say, you know, we're gonna, you know, we'll get as close as we can, as ironclad as we get, and other people get away with it. It's like, you're basing the whole thing on 25 cents, so it has to be signed, sealed, Roddenberry estate, yada yada yada. For you to get that kind of money, but it'd be 25 cents. And that should add up to a dollar.

Excellent. Thank you, Jonathan. Next, we move to another dear friend and someone who has done this many times, Frank Cavanaugh. What, what are you going to do with your dollar?

Well, it's always hard to follow Jonathan because he addresses risk as part of his pitch. But I think he did a good job of kind of viewing things the same way I did, which is I thought Sherlock really looked crisp. This seemed more like a startup review than it did in— that I've seen in some of the other historical pitches. And that feeling, that's the only thing I'd say is I do feel like a lot of these could be tightened up and make a lot of progress. Now that said, I'm going to kind of go the startup route. So, stupid humans, 50, carry me, 25, and supportive white parents, 25. Thank you so much.

Excellent. And now we're moving on to Galen Hooks.

Hi. Firstly, everyone was so great, just from a perspective of hearing stories all the time as someone from LA that works a lot in TV, film, commercial, music industry work. It's nice to see some new stories in the theater, and that seemed fresh, and yeah, just great job. I didn't comment on everybody's when you did your pitches, but just want to put that out there. I, with that being said, I really enjoy stories that appealing to new audiences and getting people in seats that typically wouldn't go see shows and have inclusive casts and just different perspectives. So I'm gonna give my full dollar to game development. I totally get the market. There are adults, many whom I know, who are obsessed with games and have the income and wouldn't normally go see shows but would go I'll go see that one. Like, I think if they were looking at the docket, they would want to see that. And I do really believe in diversification and cross-media and the fact that you understand and have already— I watched your short with the— it was called something impact. It was funny and I like it. And you had a lot of dance even in your opening scene pitch thing that you did. And I love dance and it's Yeah, I really think if it was done right, that there's a market for it, and it would— I like taking the risk to get people to watch and be audience members who typically wouldn't be. And obviously gaming is a huge, huge, huge market.

So yeah, that's where my dollar's going. Thanks so much. Fantastic. I love how you can see the diversity of reaction, that everybody's getting a little bit of love here, which makes makes me feel good, but a lot of different reasons that a lot of these shows have a lot of potential. We're gonna move on to Robert Diamond. What about your 2 cents or your 100 cents? First, my 2 cents.

I've done this, I think, I don't know, 5 or 6 times now. I thought this was actually the best group yet as far as overall potential. And I'll disagree with my fellow judge that I actually liked the live performances, which I thought gave it a good, human touch, and I feel like if you don't have video footage yet or past production footage, that the personal connection and the personal passion of a creator can better convey what you're trying to do and the passion of the project. So I actually like that a lot. And for my dollar, I'm gonna split it 4 ways at 25 cents each to Sherlock, Game Development, Carry Me, and Stupid Humans. Those were the four that spoke to me the most as far as commercial potential, safe bets, either because they compared well to me to other properties or risky and different and interesting enough like Game Development, that it would be something to roll the dice on with relative confidence.

Wonderful. Thank you, Robert. Next, we're going to hear from Cindy Convery.

Well, I'm kind of torn because I think everybody should get 12.5 cents of my dollar, but I'm going with 40 cents for game development and 40 cents for Gold Rush 2.0 because I felt it's really all about the story, and I felt that the stories were very complete with these two shows. They had beginning, middle, and end. There was a love story, there was connection, and they were funny, which is always a relief in this day and age. So I went that way, and then I had 20 cents left, which I'm going to split between Carry Me and At First Sight because of the emotional component, and the music in Carry Me was very sweet and, and connected.

So that's where I'm spending my dollar.

Fantastic. Thank you. And next we have Alyssa Cohn.

Hi.

First of all, the talent just blew me away. Like, wow, they were all so great to watch. And, you know, Tim and Pamela, this is my first time, but kudos to you for just bringing this all into fruition because it was so inspiring to be, to be part of. I, I wanted to have conviction and, you know, sort of consolidate and only have picked 3, but I picked 4 and I'm going to divide it all the way through. Uh, the first is Sherlock, which was so compelling at the starting point, and I just love the mixture of the classic story with the update and also the themes, sort of the deeper themes of Sherlock that we're not used to. I thought that was like beautiful. Game development was awesome, and I love the idea of the diverse casting. And again, it really has resonance for me of Be More Chill. But with this video game tie-in, one of my founders I coach, he told me that one of his developers, it's like a problem because he's watching video games during the day, watching video, not playing video games, watching video games. And I thought, wow, that's like a thing now. So I can sort of see the market and the resonance of that. I— Supportive White Parents was just quirky and fun, and I definitely think with Crazy Rich Asians, this is sort of having a moment and could definitely have legs if it could continue to develop, and I really loved it. And then I thought Stupid Humans really— I just— you guys are on to something. I don't know what it is, but I think you're on to something, and I definitely think that emotional component of We're all seeking something and we all have these choices to make at inflection points in our lives. And guidance on that and memory of that is quite beautiful, along with the wrap.

Thank you, Alyssa. Well said. And I agree, agree with you a lot. Next we have our last shark, our very friendly shark who's been with us for many, many Theater Accelerators and our dear friend, Deborah Barrera.

Thank you. So I've been doing this a few times, not as long as you have, Jonathan, but I am going to follow Robert's lead and disagree a little bit with you in a friendly shark way. I thought this was by far the best presentations I've seen in the time that I've done this work with Tim and Pam, and I'm much more involved now than I have been in the past And I also wanted to add, you know, I see a lot of these kinds of presentations in a variety of forms. And for different reasons, each of you rose to the occasion in ways that just— I was so excited watching every single one of them. And you were all different, and I got to see who you were, but I also got to get to the story and the heart of what you were doing. So with that said, Everybody gets something from me because that's how I'm gonna do it. And I kind of grouped you into categories. So Game Developer, Gold Rush, and Con are all getting 12.5 from me. And I see a lot of potential in all of those pieces in a wide variety of genres and venues. I could see Con going to Vegas. I can see Game Developer webisodes heading to opera. I just I see a lot of different possibilities. Gold Rush, I mean, you all did great jobs with your presentations, but I see a lot of potential and a variety of places for those shows to go. And I'm gonna jump up to My Heart Says Go, you got, I love the new title, by the way, and thanks for sharing that with us in real time. And Stupid White Parents. I'm gonna put you guys in the same category, and you each get, the split, the 12.5. So that's— I think you guys have a lot of potential. I love the diversity in both of those pieces, and I think there's some work to be done. But in terms of the pitch, I thought you guys did a great job. And for Carry Me, I'm gonna go 12.5 with you guys just because I think that there's a lot of history around the potential for your work and I love the presentation and getting to know you guys on a one— in the presentation, getting to know you and who you are. And I do think there— we have a history now of this kind of work on Broadway. And Sherlock and First Sight I'm putting in the same category. I love the presentations. I think there's a lot of potential there. I think there's some work to be done creatively on those two pieces. So I think the— So that's the reason for that division. And I also invest in— I work with a women's investment group that doesn't do theater, so I have a little bit of money on the side that I get to invest in startups that have to do with VR and AR. So I'm going to give Pandora a little bit of that money too. I can't say how much because we only got a dollar to spend here. But thank you for being part of this group, and I think there's so much going on. In the AR/VR world and immersive experiences. So thanks for participating and sharing your project with us. And I'm with you. And thanks to everyone for being here today.

And thank you, Deborah. That was so thorough and so heartfelt. And I echo everything that you said. I have loved spending these two weeks with all of you incredible people and your projects. And I want to thank everybody that was here on the call today, especially our Sharks who are very busy folks but have willingly given us our time today and had a little fun with us. So thank you, Sharks. And thank you—

Can I make a clarifying comment?

I'm sorry, what did you say, Andrew?

Can I make a clarifying comment? Sure. So I didn't say that they weren't good. I just said that in terms of preparation, in terms of what looks more finished and is thus ready for larger allocations of capital in a 5-minute presentation. That's what a difference between a prerecorded sort of set and a live performance gives you. That's the impression. I didn't say it wasn't good.

And that, Jonathan, that's why we need you, because you're our bad cop. And we always need to be working together to be better. And so thank you for that.

Well, what we've seen here and why we do Theater Accelerator is there's a massive audience for all different types. And it truly is a combination of finance. These things cost money and you need to understand how you're resonating. In fact, that's what we spend in our first week of Theater Accelerator, which makes it different than many other developmental pieces is you put on the hats of entrepreneurs and you are analyzing your show from an investment side. And That's what Jonathan's getting at here is looking at different stages just like you would in Silicon Valley when you talk about an angel investment versus a series investment. And you're all at different stages, which is exactly where you should be.

That is correct. And with that, we are ending our last class of Class 8 Theater Accelerator, which makes me a little teary that this is the last time we're gonna all meet together in learning and taking the starving out of artists. I wanna reiterate that we are accepting applications for Class 9 of Theater Accelerator, and you can go to our website, nycoc.org, to find out more about that. And also, please support us. Go to nycoc.org/donate to help us along our path and help all of these incredible teams and other teams. Get to where they need to be to tell more diverse stories in the world.

And if you haven't yet, subscribe to the YouTube channel so that you can go ahead and get updates from all the cool new stuff that's coming from these teams and other teams, as well as what we do educationally, as Pamela mentioned, with Showbiz U and our partnership with the Broadway League about bringing the next generation of storyteller forward. And thank y'all. We'll see you real soon.

Thanks so much. Bye for now. Bye. Thanks.