Sing Tank LIVE! - THEatre ACCELERATOR - Spring 2022

Here we go.

Hello and welcome to Sing Tank. I'm Pamela Winslow Kashani, co-founder of Apples and Oranges Arts, and I'm here with my partner in crime and wonderful husband Tim, and we welcome you to our show where 7 of our Theater Accelerator teams are going to pitch their wonderful original musicals to our friendly sharks from the theater industry and beyond, and it's all done in fun. So we're so glad that that you could join us. Today ends our 12th class of Theater Accelerator, which is a 2-week virtual program where we coach creative teams using Silicon Valley principles to help them become not just thriving creatives, but creative entrepreneurs so that they can take the starving out of artist. But this year we added yet another layer.

If you look far in the corner, you're gonna see a headset here. Each team has been given a headset in our Theater Accelerator Spring 2022 class. We did this last year, and this year we took it even farther where we not only jumped into worlds, we built worlds, and we looked at how they can take their shows and create a development and distribution path. As we embarked on this journey, we looked at how can we bring in our vision for Broadway in 2030, or we're calling it Broadversity, And we are looking at the relationship between live entertainment, which we still absolutely love and want to grow, not get rid of, but how we can also use these extended realities to create new opportunities to, as Pamela said, take the starving out of artists. And through that exploration, our amazing teams are going to be presenting to you today different ways that they are now looking at their show from both the creative side, but as well as the entrepreneurial side. Massive thank you to our mentors who joined us during these 2 weeks and spent anywhere from an hour to 3 hours talking about everything from Web3 to the business of theater to being a scholar, just how you can take control of your own social media and taking us into worlds where we ventured and explored what the future of theater will be. Here's how it works. Very simple. Each team is given 5 minutes to pitch their show to our friendly judges. In that 5 minutes, they can do whatever they want to because it's followed by a 5-minute question and answer from the judges. After all 7 teams have done their pitches, we then open it up for one last Q&A for our judges to clarify any questions they have for each or any of the teams. Then the judges go into their secret judge room and they are given one virtual dollar. And it's virtual because we are in an extended reality, and it's virtual because we also really don't care, meaning that this is all done in fun, and they can divide up that virtual dollar however they want to. What they are doing is sharing their feedback, which helps our artists move forward in their direction with the show.

Yes, and we have a very esteemed panel of judges, and I can't wait to introduce you to them. First off, we have Deborah Barrera. She's making her 12th appearance here as a Sing Tank judge. She has never missed one. Very impressive. She is founder of Fire Muse Productions and is a multi— multiple Tony Award-winning producer, and her current projects include Freestyle Love Supreme and Ain't Too Proud, which are both on the road, and the Seven Fingers production of Dear San Francisco at Club Fugazi. She's a founder of Women's Independent Producers Group and an active member of the Broadway League. Welcome, Deborah.

My college buddy, he was the TA in my first class in computer science many moons ago, Frank Kavanaugh, who is co-founder of Fort Ashford. He's an investor, producer with us, and executive in operational management in major corporations. More importantly, Frank is the person that you call when you have a problem because he can see right through you and he will help you fix your problems. We will be talking afterwards. Frank also helped kick off the original version of Theater Accelerator and has been around for the entire trajectory of these amazing artists that we are seeing today.

Dr. Ama Gartetegoh-Kooten. Dr. Ama is a Theater Accelerator alum and a multidisciplinary writer, performer, producer, and scholar who transforms historical material about Black identity into performances for the stage and screen. Named a 2019 TED Fellow, she bridges the worlds of academia and arts and entertainment, having worked with A&E Networks, the History Channel, National History Day, Inc., and as a professor. Dr. Ama is best known as the lead creative force and executive behind the national team of At Buffalo: A New Musical. Welcome, Dr. Ama.

Dr. Alma, my TED buddy. Jonathan Leden, our friend, neighbor, investor, and philanthropist. Jonathan is a private investor based outside of Orlando. Prior to his 20-year, 20-plus year career in finance, he was a production manager in the performing arts. Therefore, he understands what it's like to be a starving artist, and he understands what it's like to be a philanthropist who's helping other people not be starving artists. He is an amazing force, and I have ridden on his coattails helping out with the Orlando Ballet and turning it into an absolute world-class organization. So big thank you to another one of our founding members, Jonathan Leden. And last, but certainly not last and least, are our friend Kyle Wright, the director of digital projects over at the Shuberts and my partner in crime prime on the Broadway Tech Accelerator, now being branded the Broadway Tech Studios. He spent over 10 years in marketing with the Shubert Organization and the emerging entertainment space. Any technology that you see go through the theatrical world in one way or another will go through Kyle Wright. He is a true visionary when it comes to our art form and how we coalesce the creative with the technology so that we're able to not only help the artists but the audiences and the producers and pretty much everybody is knocking on Kyle's door. Well, he's a huge fan of Theater Accelerator and we are now ready to begin our show.

Thank you, thank you, judges. It is time now for the main event, what you've been waiting for, the presentations from our amazing teams. We have spent the last 2 short weeks together and we've so enjoyed getting to know all of them. And I know for sure you are in for an absolute treat. So let's get started. First up, we have Alice Jankel, Pamela Grayson, and Aaron Drescher with The Sustain.

The Sustain, a new musical. Sex and the desire for connection never stop complicating our very human lives. A few years ago, Pam, Aaron, and I were stopped in our tracks by this photo. The New York Times published it in a series about lust and love in assisted living communities. There is so much happening in this photo, so many layers of spark and frisson here, along with the prospect of total release or total combustion hovering in the wings. It launched us into creating a world. Who are these people? What are they getting themselves into? And who were they before this? And why don't we ever ask them? The Sustain is an intimate musical about love, sex, and friendship among a group of fervent individuals all living together in an assisted living residence. With intertwining stories of passion and connection, The Sustain blends characters of different generations, races, and socioeconomic strata. The interlaced stories give us a love actually framework while the fresh indie rock music beats with all the contemporary angst and energy of a spring awakening.

The title refers to a guitarist's sustain pedal and comes from a major song in the middle of the show called "It's About the Sustain." It's sung by a character who is a retired rock and roll producer, and it is an homage to staying the course or holding a guitar note.

It's about the sustain.

Hold on to the note. Oh, you don't have to go on in a hurry.

You're not playing solo.

It's a long show, so you better know that the best parts happen in the moment.

So let it all ring out today. It's about the sustain.

Harry and Vivian's love affair surprises them. A recent widow, Harry is in his 80s, a former music executive and white. He finds himself smitten with Vivian, also in her 80s, adamantly independent, a former school principal, and Black. They fall for each other passionately until families in fear come screeching in. Combustion. When Harry's 16-year-old grandson provides some unexpected emotional connection, there is well, release, and more combustion. Lily is in her 80s and a retired white opera singer. She meets her new aide Paulina, a Puerto Rican single mom whose son coincidentally goes to Lily's old college. The women bond. Laughter and profound revelations transform friendship into a lifeboat. They become each other's person, each other's ballast. But then Lily falls, and she loses her filter and accuses Paulina of stealing. Combustion. Can the friendship come back from what cannot now be unsaid? Old Man in the wheelchair sleeps throughout the show, but a whiff of Paulina's lavender cologne takes him back to his first sexual encounter during World War II. He relives it, though to the outer world he just seems to sleep. Shelley, in her 50s, is the home's executive director. Her marriage is shaken as she wrestles with her own emotionally distant father, buying him expensive gifts to connect.

<LYRICS>I don't really know you, and soon it's gonna be too late.</LYRICS> You never let me know you. How many years can I let this wait?

When Shelley adjusts Old Man in the Wheelchair's pillow, he speaks to her. Revelation and release. Connection. We end as we began, with Old Man in the Wheelchair sleeping. Eyes closed, he does a tiny dance step from his chair, reminding us who he's been. Then he's still.

The Sustain has been developed at Theater Now National Musical Writers Lab, has been featured in cabaret form at Encore New York City, the Gold Standard Festival, and was an O'Neill semifinalist.

With 9 actors, a 4-piece rock band, a simple set, and juicy parts for older actors, The Sustain is eminently producible. We're ready for a well-rehearsed staged reading and workshop. For us, it's about the sustain. Thank you.

And thank you, Alice, Pam, and Aaron. Let's open up some questions for our judges.

Oh, that was wonderful. Thank you for sharing your work. My question is, I would love to know about you all as a team. How did you come together to collaborate?

Well, okay, Alice, you could—

I'll take it.

Um, Pam and I have co-written the book and the lyrics to another musical before. We saw these— this series of photos in the New York Times, got very excited, found Aaron, who we met through Theater Now New York's Musical Theater Writers Workshop when we all worked together on a short musical there. And took off from there.

Yeah, one of the positives of the COVID situation was to get this script in my hands from Alice and Pam, who've been working together, and just really being able to dive in. And the intimacy of the show really caught me. And then we started really digging into it.

Definitely done.

Deborah, you talk a little bit about the cost component. What is the ask? You said you're looking for a staged reading, or you feel like you're ready for a staged reading in a workshop. What do you perceive as the cost of that? Are you looking for a producer slash producing team to take that on? And the last part of that question is, what is— why wouldn't you want to go to perhaps a regional theater and do the workshopping and get us a small production up, given the trajectory you've already told us you're— you had Theater Now Encore, which is incredible, congratulations, and then a finalist for the O'Neill. Do you feel like all of those things have prepared you to just go straight to a regional and, and get it on its feet with the development happening there? Sorry, I know it's a long question.

I think we would be very happy to go straight to a regional and do development with them into a production, but we also need to get eyes on this, and, and so a 29-hour workshop or reading is a great way to do that, but we feel quite ready to get into development up on our feet. 29-hour readings usually cost, with a cast of 9 and a band this size in New York City, anywhere between $10,000 and $20,000 in my experience. We could— so that's not a big ask. That's a great way to develop it and get eyes on it for not very much money.

Great, thank you. Great presentation, by the way, guys. Thank you.

Thank you.

Okay, next question.

Just two quick ones. I got the Taurus base pedal reference. I don't see how that ties in in terms of what the sustain is. Like, how does that musically—

what—

how does that tie in? And number two, who's your audience? Um, and I say that in terms of, are you You see, it's relatable at a lot of levels. It's relatable to me because I'm at that age where I have parents going into assisted. But is this, you know, seniors looking at themselves? Is this, you know, children looking at their parents?

Is this—

are we going down the path of Golden Girls stereotypes? Or, you know, where— you know, it seems like you're going more substantive. So can you comment on those things?

Alice, I would talk about that, then maybe Aaron and music. Part, right? Do you want to jump in with that?

Yes, so our, our audience is broad. We want this for everyone. Gen Zers love their grandparents. People my age are having a hard time with their parents. And, and older people are not seen enough.

So this is a—

this is something— there's, there's somebody of every age in this. That one of the key characters is the 16-year-old grandson of the ex-rocker, the ex-music producer Harry. Um, so we do have people of all generations, and we will market to all of them.

And actually, they're all this whole, you know, influencers, older people influencing the younger generation. The Times just had a whole piece about it. So we really feel we kind of have our finger on the pulse of how these how the young people are really looking to the, to their older, the older generations for inspiration, not just as not silly old people, but actually people with something to say. And that's inspiring to them. So we're thrilled about that.

And quick on the music end of that, the music, music is part of partly a vehicle for a contemporary sound for some of these older generation people. That can really attract potentially younger audience. But the idea of that is to kind of like, even if an 85-year-old is singing it out, that performance and that style is like, you know, singing in the shower, in the car or something like that.

So that's part of it.

Mick Jagger, man. Mick Jagger is doing it right now.

Yeah, Tina Turner.

I mean, they're sustaining.

Yeah.

Okay.

Right, it's sort of metaphor for keep on going.

Sorry, I'm going to jump in because we're running out of time.

Thank you, Alice.

I would encourage you to, as you're thinking through this— great presentation, by the way— I, um, that saying you want to market to all segments ranging from 16 to 85 is the kiss of death for anybody wanting to produce something because you're talking about a really expensive proposition. Okay, so you need to find a core audience that you think can sustain the first 6 to 9 months or 3 to 6 months or however you think about the life cycle of this from a commercial standpoint. And then add into that, it's not making it, it's not about exclusivity, but it's about identifying who's going to be your core base from which you grow. Because the way you reach out to 16-year-olds to 25-year-olds is going to be very drastically different than the way you reach out to 65+. And I can just tell you, because I look at this on a daily basis, Our 65+ audience attendance on Broadway has decreased by about 30% and has not recovered and doesn't show signs of fully recovering. And so to depend upon that on a live audience in the near future is gonna be interesting. Hopefully it will, but I think it's worth thinking through that because if you're looking for capitalization and people to invest, they're gonna wanna know that you have a realistic sense of how to sell tickets and get people in seats. And it's just not realistic to think you can get everybody in all at once. And target everybody, because that's targeting nobody. That would be my advice to you. Everyone falls into that same trap, so that's not you personally, but just have a think on that as you're thinking through this.

That's very helpful, and you're right. Thank you.

All right.

Well, thank you, Kyle, for the insights, and thanks everyone for your great questions. We're going to move forward to our next piece. We have Caitlin Bear and the Magicians Society of Manhattan.

What is going on with our teens? How can we help them? What is this pain that they're feeling? It's a question that made me, as a writer with a background in cognitive psychology, start writing this book. Play a few years ago about 3 Manhattan private school teens dabbling in the occult who seemingly have it all but are all quietly suffering, suffering isolated in their own pain. Magicians Society, at the time called The Society, had a developmental reading with A-list Broadway actors Sophia Anne Caruso, Nikhil Saboo, and Nathan Salstone, directed by Hunter Byrd. The Society was developed at the New Group Playwriting Workshop, was a rave theater festival Soul finalist before COVID hit and had a reading at the Flea Theatre. A proof of concept was filmed during the developmental workshop in Canada. And so our story begins. Our protagonist Cassandra, alone with the grief of her mother's death, has been roaming down in the subways, riding the backs of train cars, daring death. One day she sees a homeless woman disappear down the tracks and she decides to follow. The woman disappears, but Cassandra discovers an abandoned construction site where she believes she can can perform true magic. On the night of Samhain, October 31st, she convinces Rafe and Nat, both with their own dark thoughts, to go down with her. The unlikely three wind their way down to it in order to perform a ritual of healing. But once down in the cavern, they become trapped. It's here, down below, that painful truths, ones that they hadn't ever dared express to anyone, quietly emerge. And so down below, magic and alchemy do occur, but it's not the type they had expected. Thematically, The Magician's Society is about uncovering the truth, no matter how hard it might be, no matter how deeply we've hidden it from ourselves, how sometimes we might— we must dare break apart in order to become whole. Tonally, this play with music is modern, downtown cool, with classical mythical undertones, wry humor with the constant threat of danger. There's an excitement for this project, specifically in the 18- to 29-year-old subset, those who are on social media, and those who game. During its development, it became really clear to me that I have to go to where they are to increase accessibility in a way that speaks to them and in a way that has cool factor, which brings me to virtual reality, a medium I actually think the story's been waiting for all along. Imagine— whoops, sorry. Imagine following Cass, Rafe, and Nat down into the grit and grime and danger of the subway, racing down the tracks, the train just behind you, barely making it into the cavern. Finally, you witness and undergo the secret rituals with the three magicians. There, you too perhaps become an alchemist with the potential to change the outcome of the ending, maybe even for yourself. And so we're looking for a collaborative producer who's excited to help develop this property and understands the emergent possibilities of virtual reality. Together we'll secure a large-scale strategic partnership with someone like a Meta or an Epic. By the end of 2022, we'll create a large social media build and we'll be workshopping and honing an asset with a composer to score the music. And by the end of 2023, we'll be in full-scale production. And so why now? Well, suicide is the second leading cause of death amongst people ages 15 to 24 in the U.S. Nearly 1 in 5 high school students report serious thoughts of suicide. What is happening to our teens and with our teens? How can we help them? Well, why don't we ask them? So through social media, let's collaborate with a larger audience and have them aid in its workshop as a quasi-collective in a way that makes them feel seen and heard and necessary and hopeful, and hopefully transmute a modicum of pain into something possibly transcendent. We know that story has the capacity to change lives. This is a conversation we cannot put off. We need to act now. There's really no time to lose, and that's why I've already begun. Okay, when you're ready.

There's a tenet in particle physics that shows that two particles in two disparate locales are capable of tangling with one another, having an effect on the other despite not interacting directly. It need not matter how far apart it is.

There is a There's a whisper. Whisper.

If I listen, a whisper, and it says, "Wouldn't it be a relief? Wouldn't it be a—" Sometimes the feeling, it's like a strong wind, like going through the trees.

Mr.

High has told me to write this, to write.

He thinks I'm a good writer, so here I am, starting.

The wind that night was strange. Strange.

Everything felt off.

Everything felt odd.

I don't know what to write.

What they don't tell you is that sometimes you don't know, and every time it feels dangerous, menacing.

Everything feels like sometimes, somehow, things are about to break loose.

Like you're holding on. Like you're holding on.

About to break like fragile glass.

Does everyone feel this way? Am I in the world, or is the world in me? Thank you very much.

Thank you, Caitlin. Well done, well done. Thank you. Let's move to our judges for questions. Who's up? Who has a question for Caitlin?

Frank mentioned partnering with a group. What kind of expectation do you have for the costs associated with that, or what kind of budget do you initially use to move forward on your virtual approach?

Right, well, um, I would estimate, having done some research, that it would start at around $50,000, um, and obviously depending on what what capabilities from there and what we bring in and what we use, it could go up and up and up. But I think at base, using sort of a set that I already have, for example, that Tim and Pamela and everyone knows about, but I think, given the composers, director, everything, we could start at $50,000.

Caitlin, explain for those people that know how quickly you built that New York set.

Oh, I went on the Unity, the Unity Hub and Unity Store and found this incredible underground, this subway system basically. And I, it was already created, it was massive and it has caverns and everything. And I just bought it for $50.

And then you created the video that created the world and all of that was done in how long?

Well, the click to buy it took 3 seconds, and then you walked me through, which was a little frightening. Um, and then we— you walked me through it. It took a couple hours to upload, and then we were ready to go. I mean, we just need to kind of go through, find some— get actors, have headsets, and then, you know, we're ready to go.

Excellent. All right, next question.

Out of curiosity, on that subject, what, what, if any, are the use restrictions on something that you buy for $50 like that, or are there any?

I believe that over— if you make over $100,000, then you— there's a fee, or then— or you can pay a royalty. There it is. I have to look into the exact details, but it is, it is, you know, written in there. It is— there is something that's definitely workable.

Interesting. Cool. Yeah, yeah. I'm a little— so since I have the mic, I'll continue to ask. So can you give me a little more insight? I think I get it, but like, what is the experience? How does it actually work?

Well, you know, this is something that I, you know, I am open to, but I see basically it would be nice to have live actors obviously as playing Rafe and Cassandra and Nat so that the audience member can go in and go and be with them. I don't see it as being particularly interactive just because of the nature of the complexity of, you know, going from there. But I see part, you know, what I keep going back to is the audience and what they, and really honing in on that experience. And the set has always been such a big part of it for me, even when I thought of it on stage. And so in virtual reality, if you can actually go down into it and be in it, you know, there is that element of claustrophobia and, you know, aliveness and music, and it could be actually really incredible. But that's part of what I want to explore a little bit, is do a little bit of R&D, you know, in the next few months to figure out the best way forward to serve the story in the best way.

Jonathan, you have your hand up.

So, um, quick one. How does this occur live? Is this something you sign on and you watch in video? And Where, where, where's the, where does this exist? Is this all in cyberspace? And then, then how do you get paid, um, in terms of what's the, what's the revenue model in this sort of new world order?

Yes, that is, that is all, I suppose, what part of what is going on, you know, discovering this new realm of in, in VR. But in this capacity, you know, there are, there is a situation or a circumstance where we could do a pop-up We could do where people could come, we could give them the virtual reality glasses, they could put them on and they could pay a ticket to see it. We could do it on Broadway, right? In Times Square, find a space that would allow that. So there could be that model. They could be, or there's also foreseeably down the road, the model where, Anyone anywhere with an Oculus or a headset can pay a subscription, or they pay to buy it, just like you bought Dear Angelica, for example, on the Oculus, and they experience it that way. So there's definitely many different revenue streams from this. This is a property that actually could— I've already written the TV pilot. So there are different streams and ways that this property can go. That can eventually start with this and then build from there depending on audience feedback and so forth.

All right, Deborah, you'll be our last question.

Great. Is there a gaming component to this project that you've worked through? And, and I have so many questions. It was a good— I really get what you're doing here, and I just want to say, I think it's— I completely agree that the subject matter and the topic is very relevant and necessary. I probably should have started with that. But also, can you talk a little bit about your team? Yes, because I wasn't clear about that.

Thank you. Yes, no problem. Um, well, first of all, I, I've been working with director Hunter Byrd and with general manager Evan Bernard in on this. And I've had, you know, I'm sort of the core group, but I, you know, they're sort of, but I'm looking to build out my team even more, obviously, and with a producer and so forth. So, and in terms of the gaming element, I don't foresee this at this moment in time, adding a gaming element. I see it as a pure story. Down the road, certainly, you know, we could have more immersive experiences where they, they could go in and absolutely go into a game and gamify it a little bit. But I think that's too complicated at this point in time. At this point in time, I think it's, it needs to be relatively on the rails for safety, you know, for safety and just for purposes of what this is. It is an art, you know, it is an art form and it is a story that needs to be told.

Told through these characters. Great, thank you.

And I will say, in the 2 weeks they've been asked to talk about these different experiences, so you might also mention that it is a play that could be presented on a traditional stage. Now you've got me totally converted. I think I've convinced everybody so much about emerging technologies that they forgot, oh yeah, there's that aspect too.

No, I mean, I obviously, I wrote it first and foremost as a play, and I've always, I, you know, and so in the past, but But, you know, virtual reality during the pandemic, I started thinking accessibility and teens and I keep going back. Well, does this audience go to plays? Well, realistically speaking, we want to drive them back to the theatre. So I see this as something, as a way to hone it in and drive them back to the theatre so that we actually could have it as a play in a physical location. Yes, I would love that. That's my dream. But let's get them to that place, right? Build the experience, build the, the marketing and so that they know about it and they want to go.

It's worth thinking, I know it's a jump, but it is worth thinking about if you're going to drive to physical because of the subject matter that you're working with, that isolating VR experiences may not be the best holistic approach for something that's about the way people are feeling in this way, or maybe it is depending on where you're coming from. So it may be something where you're trying to drive something into something that they can experience live in a community basis first, as opposed to somebody that can only travel to Broadway or to a specific major market to experience. Just something to think about as a tie-in community-wise there.

Yeah, that's a great idea.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Kyle. We, we gotta jump now. We have a lot more in store. So thank you, Caitlin. Thank you, everyone. We're going to move forward with Jay Allen Zimmerman and Roboticus.

Hello. Do you wish some parts were better, maybe even better than human? I sure do. I'm a composer who became deaf, and that's why Roboticus is my magnum opus. Roboticus is an epic transformation musical with a fun vibe, like a mashup of Guardians of the Galaxy with Wicked for geeks. But every moment is grounded in real science and real conflicting emotions because I have experienced transformation in the real world. I was a short boy soprano. Now I'm a tall Deaf composer. Facing deafness was so challenging, I could only adapt by creating my incredibly Deaf musical, which was seen off-Broadway. And it was painful because it happened due to being so close to the Twin Towers on September 11th, so you can actually see footage of me on History Channel. I explored changing my ears with experimental hearing regeneration with hearing regeneration injections and talked about on Science Friday. I considered surgically altering my hearing with cochlear implants, which would technically make me a cyborg. Today, our phones already have artificial intelligence, our hospitals use surgical robots, our disabled athletes wear bionic limbs. When tech, for this sake, will become so good that we're going to be better than human, will you choose to upgrade? In Roboticus, our hero chooses yes, leading to a wild adventure through the worlds of robotics as he obsessively uses bionics to try to become perfect, training in his arms, his legs, his head until he's transformed from a short, battered bot geek into a giant mecha robot. In real life, I chose no, which led to a wild adventure in transforming accessibility technology into art forms. Like the music visualizers I built with Google and integrated into my show Brainstorm, the captioning and projection mapping techniques that I pioneered to turn a caption screen into an ever-growing antagonist for my Incredibly Deaf Musical, and when you enter the Robotikus Theater, you'll be instantly entertained by my most ambitious accessibility art project ever, the Orchestra ARCH, a giant patent-pending visual music installation of musical robots inspired by over a decade of my residencies with real bots. Like these bots at Spotify— oh, technical error. Like these percussion bots at Spotify, deconstructed organ bots seen at the Guggenheim, and everyone's favorite, the Lima Guitar Bot. The sonic vibrations and visual music provided by the arts will help people like me experience music in our minds and bodies. So as you watch the following trailer, please remember the humor will be grounded in realness, physically framed by real robots, and performed with at least one amputee actor wearing a functional bionic limb You'll be seeing my face today though, because during COVID I started filming myself playing all the characters and discovered this allows me to develop a musical in silence, performing, editing, and composing in silence, and then having my hearing friends sing in sync with my lips. So obviously we'll upgrade this from a deaf guy wearing a robot arm he hacked out of old leggings and microwaved dinner plates. Enjoy.

Roboticus? Roboticus? Roboticus? Roboticus? It's a mashup of robot and Spartacus. Why choose flies when you can be flies? Whoa, you okay back there? We already partied in the lab, and your creepy boyfriend talked me into getting a bionic— Ah! Oh, there he is, Professor! Shut it down, Ron!

I can't!

Don't leave me!

If you want to know how it ends, I am seeking $140 million to build a radically accessible theater and tourist attraction on Broadway. However, I will settle for $140,000 to do 3 things. 1, upgrade my Home Wave videos with virtual backgrounds and face replacement to create a stunning tweakable vision of the whole show without the expense and accessibility barriers of workshops. 2, film a proof-of-concept live concert with Broadway singers and a small robot band to demonstrate the visual impact of combining real humans with real metal bats. And 3, build the robot orchestra arch virtually so that we can use projections of it for rehearsals and developmental productions and also export the designs for physical construction. These 3 components will also simultaneously generate the content that we need for a concept album, graphic novel, and documentary series, which can each be monetized to help fund the next stage of development. Yes, producing a robot musical by a deaf guy will be an epic adventure, but it really can't lose because the appeal is global. People will talk about it forever, and the orchestra of bots can remain a tourist attraction and MIDI-controlled orchestra ready to provide visual music access for my next show. Let's change the world! Thank you.

Thank you, Jay. Best price anchoring ever. Best ever. Oh, is that what it's called?

Price anchoring? Yes.

I want $140 million, but I'll take $140,000. I love it. Judges!

Dr.

Alma. Thank you for your presentation. It really has been a joy, everybody's presentations. So Jay, what an interesting world. I, I, that $140 million ask, I am so here for that in terms of making an entirely accessible theater on Broadway. And I, I don't know if I missed this earlier in your presentation, but in the, in the design of the show, are there tech collaborators with whom you're already working? And if so, who are they and how is that collaboration going? If not, who do you envision approaching to collaborate with?

Okay, great. So in terms of the technology for the show, I mean, we break it apart in terms of the robotic orchestra arch. So I have the different robot collectives that I've worked with, which are LIMA and AMIE and Taka Tewi Organ Bots. Now, a lot of what they've designed is publicly released, so we can build new things based on that because I'm very interested in how we can actually free ourselves up. If you saw in the picture with the— what I did at Spotify, so I hacked this together in about a day with the AMIE robots. But I discovered I could rotate traditional instruments into a new position to make them more visually accessible without having to worry about humans. So that leads to the second collaborator, which would be a set designer who can sort of combine these things together. And I have my list of favorite set designers. And then the third collaborator we need, of course, is the technology that would appear on stage. How do I balance real bionic limbs with costuming to make the costuming believable? And we've done some preliminary ideas on how that can work, um, because in Act 2, actually, you see this guy become this giant robot, and the robot stays there all the time during intermission, but when he's activated, his flesh self has been put back together. So we have to swap out the actor in intermission. So does that sort of answer your question? It's a lot of people, but first I just want to get my expression out there, and then we can start partnering with these people on how to make it in the real world.

Frank?

I actually— he answered my question.

Okay. Oh, okay.

Okay, next question.

Deborah, everybody. Okay, first of all, thank you.

That was amazing. And I think you're just a delight to listen to. And as I said this to you earlier, whatever you do, I hope you're on stage somewhere doing something because you're just lovely. And thank you. Is there any ownership of any of your— you talked about a patent pending, you talked about part— doing something, not partnering with Spotify. You've been working on this at university. Is there any partnerships that are in place already with these different groups that you've mentioned in your presentation?

So I've been really careful from experience to make sure that I'm not giving ownership of anything I'm creating, including the original IP for the story, which is or we can do a graphic novel, and producer can help me figure out and strategize which thing we should release first. So there's no— nobody's tied to this in terms of any sort of legal ownership. Great.

Thank you. Great job. Thank you. All right.

We have time for one more. If we have one more question, that's it.

Kyle. Hello. Hi, Jay. Hello. I love the story. Honestly, I think it's a really— among other things, I think everything is really interesting, but I really like the story that you're tackling because it's going to be only more and more relevant as time goes on, just for all kinds of people. I think it's actually incredibly broad, the appeal to it. Kind of building on your answer about adding more robotics on stage as opposed to it being done through puppetry or through anything else that could be a different kind of perhaps co-equal or even more effective way of kind of embodying this. To you, is the technology, the robotic component of it and the bionic limbs, very important to it, or is it kind of in service to the story? And so as you go down the pike here, understanding what's going to be most effective in telling the story and communicating the, the quandary of how to improve yourself and what that means and what that looks like, how do you kind of balance those two things? Because that could get very tricky, obviously, when you're trying to do however many shows a week, and that's a lot of technical elements to make sure are going to work every time.

Okay, yeah, I was having a little trouble following all the details in there, so correct me if I'm answering this incorrectly. But, um, so my thinking of balancing in terms of the technology, the real technology and the fake technology, I mean, we have issues of representation, which is what came out of— I don't know if you know about the Apothee group that used to be within LACMA, about giving more opportunities. So that's why I'm just trying to design at least one character. We can have a real amputee but not stating which limb. So we were looking at how can we make these bionic limbs, how can we cut up, right, things that are functional so they look even more advanced. So that's something I have explored, um, in terms of making it function all the time on stage. So here's the component I did not tell you in my pitch. Is because I'm replacing all the human musicians with my robotic arch. Actually, the staging, the stuff that's happening on set, will be very lightweight because I'm replacing all stage animation with dancers. So they'll be using these props and projection mapping and stuff. Interesting. So then we're really lightweight to go anywhere. We just need it to look realistic enough, and that's where it's difficult to figure out how we're going to— are we going to 3D print these? But if you 3D print them, they may not be stable. For long runs. So that will take some exploring to figure out how to build it.

It might be worth considering, um, because I think this is an element that would actually very much go in with what you're saying, it seems, story-wise, kind of playing with the interplay between your robotic musicians and real musicians, and how I could actually see where you have both, and then what begins is a very antagonistic relationship between the real musician and the robotic musician, you can actually see them kind of start to symbiotically exist. Could be a very interesting way of thinking about it. I think enhances the story perhaps, while also not eliminating what is a very struggling industry as well. And I think there could be an interesting way of playing with that that would actually provide a very positive kind of interaction with the musician community. As opposed to making it replacement and perhaps a little antagonistic, which wouldn't be the easiest thing for you from a business standpoint.

Yeah, that's a great idea. I mean, definitely we could interweave some live musicians into it. I think it could be fun. But also, I think making clear that the performance that gets captured, that is delivered by a robot, would come from a human in the first place.

Right. Yeah, exactly. Okay, so that's also a very— there's a lot in there. It's cool. I love it.

I think it's really interesting. The big thing for me is that these orchestras on Broadway has just completely shrunk into small bands, so this is a way that we can have a 30-piece orchestra with only paying for 4 or 5 people. The decision genius is gonna love it.

Thank you, thank you everybody, thank you Jay. We're gonna move on. We have another team up for you. We have Eric C. Jones and Joshua Davis. With American Skin.

Hello everybody, I'm Joshua Davis, and hi, I'm Eric C.

Jones. Wait a second, I'm sorry, hey, guess what?

Actually, Joshua Davis is our composer, and my name is Eric C. Jones, and I'm the book writer and lyricist, and we've been writing projects together since 2017. We are the 2020 NABTA 15-Minute Musical winners for the show White Man's Burden, a musical number that was cut from the show that we're about to share with you today. The tragic death of George Floyd and the protests that soon followed affected us deeply, and we wanted to create a piece that is truly life imitating art. When was the last time you ever saw a rock musical morality play filled with supernatural tension, race relations, COVID, and car crashes all rolled up into one? You haven't? Well, welcome to the world of American Skin. American Skin tells the story of DJ and his longtime friends Ralphie and Hyde as they go on a wild ride through, through Coney Island where they crash their car. They wind up in a sideshow which turns out to be a purgatory for racial violence and bigotry. The boys come comes face to face with real-life everyday Americans like Jose Campos Torres, Trayvon Martin, and Vincent Chin. These sideshow freaks were killed because of the color of their skin. They are led by a charismatic ringleader, Mikey Mike. And Mikey Mike must compete with his oldest frenemy, Big Louie, who owns the nightclub The Inferno. The present meets the past in this supernatural, uh, intervention of sorts. However, time is running out for DJ and his friends. Will the boys realize how dire the situation is? Will DJ and his friends ever listen? Through a series of twists and turns, we follow their journey and how they deal with their own internal bigotry through song and dance. Well, of course, what do you expect? It's a musical. American Skin has the rock energy of RENT, the inventiveness of Assassins, and the social commentary of the film Crash. The show has a multi-ethnic cast of 13, and there is one unit set in which it could be, be very flexibly used and performed in the round, in a proscenium arch, or even an immersive environment. It is that versatile. This show also helps the audience to shine a light on their own inherent bigotry and take accountability by having the courage to change. The political and social tone is very funny, yet quite scathing. It pulls no punches and at times can make the audience feel very uncomfortable. But we are very hopeful that American Skin is a very hopeful piece and that it will inspire Americans to look beyond our skin color and inspire our humanity. <LYRICS>No matter what it takes—</LYRICS> As two Black creators, we believe that compassion and understanding matters as much as Black lives. As artists and friends, we are on one accord by bringing the message of love, compassion, and equality for all Americans.

For tuning in to that, that was really, really great. Now, thank you.

Well, currently we've had 2 readings of American Skin with Create Theatre from 2020 and 2021. We also had a development at Theater Now New York for the last year and a half, but we are currently looking for a producer to further develop our show into a 29-hour stage reading and/or a workshop production with your financial support of $60,000. We want to develop a pre-show AR immersive experience called One Nation Project, which allows audience to actually see themselves and hear the stories of other people through their skin color.

We would like to collaborate with major museums and art institutions in the country to bring our vision to life, because once you partner with us, you are more than a collaborator. You are my skinfolk. That's right. That's right. All right, thank you so much for your time, and we look forward toward your questions.

Thank you all so much. And thank you, Joshua and Eric. Let's move to our judges, please. Judges, questions for our team? Yes, Kyle.

Hello, can you hear me? Sorry, there we are. Firstly, great presentation. That's why your energy on camera as I was watching was really quite something. It was great. You obviously are very passionate about this project, as you should be. So where I got a little— not lost, but I want to get some clarity— is I think the story, the concept is fantastic, but do you envision this— and obviously can go in a bunch of directions— as this being a purely virtual experience, an in-person experience? I mean, maybe I lost the thread a little bit. I'm curious, like, how you see that progressing, what that looks like.

Uh, we wanted to make it as, uh, 50/50 is going to be half, half live production and, uh, half virtual. Uh, we see this show as can be immersive, uh, where, uh, before the show begins that people can be wearing the headsets and they can be able to walk through a hall of seeing, uh, famous Americans or or live, real-life Americans who have been killed because of the color of their skin. And then when they see the production, they actually get a chance to see the actual characters in person.

So do you envision those in sequence, like all on the same ticket, so to speak, or separate experiences?

I would say they'd be in one ticket, basically for cost expenditures.

And why, which makes total sense, why headset as opposed to projection mapping, screens, more traditional kind of immersive components that don't require individualized headsets, IT, Wi-Fi, all that stuff?

I just think that if you actually show, if you use the headset, people will actually really see themselves. They feel like they're actually walking in an environment that may, at times for some people, might be uncomfortable. Like, you know, if a, like, you know, the little girl trying to go to the school in Montgomery, Alabama, and they hear the taunts and the screams. So it'll be something that they will truly never forget.

100%. I agree. I hear you on the story side. I would encourage you to think about— I know other people ask questions, so I'll shut up soon, I promise, Pam and Tim— but I would encourage you to think about service the story. 100%, I agree with you. What the biggest disservice to your story will be, however, is if something doesn't work. And so what you're talking about is incredibly difficult, not impossible. Nothing's impossible if you pay enough money for it. But, um, which I would hate to see happen is someone is pulled out of that experience and loses that connection because the battery on the headset is low or because the Wi-Fi flickers, as it always does, or because something happens and someone has to come interrupt them to help, as opposed to something that if it's all in one seamless experience that requires that sequential storytelling, that there's almost no way it can be stopped because that's going to be very important. So I would encourage you to think about that as you're, as you're thinking through it. Great work. That's a great point.

And Eric, we can talk offline because we— 2 weeks is fast. To talk about a lot of these new technologies. What Kyle is getting at is there are some augmented technologies through different technologies that we know, like projection mapping, that can really immerse you and have you feel similar to what you would do wearing a headset. And so he's looking at it from a logistical standpoint. Great.

Hi, loved your music, and I'm— I will repeat the enthusiasm is infectious. My question goes back to kind of a basic issue is, what do you want the audience to emerge with? Just what emotion, what feeling? You talked about several different things in there, and that's really at the end what I'm trying to understand.

Okay, well, I want the audience to basically to feel a sense of empathy. A musical about, you know, dealing with racism, but it also— there's, you know, there's a lot of humor involved, but it's also a lot of pathos. It also, you know, has a lot of pain. So it shows a kind of like, you know, a kind of like a mirror. I want people to kind of see themselves and kind of like have a sense of introspection and reflection. Because, you know, particularly how our society is right now, we really need some introspection.

You say it in your video. I'm gonna help you a little bit here, Eric. What's the key words at the end of the show? Do you want people divided? Do you want people united?

Uh, we want people united and, and show, and show, uh, empathy for one another.

Yeah, absolutely, because, you know, there's, um, so many things going on where we are, um, judging people based on their race instead of judging them on the content of their character. So it's important that we really get that empathetic piece across.

Thank you. Makes sense. Yes. Dr. Ama.

Thank you, Eric and Joshua, for your presentation. What a fascinating musical and experience. You know, so I have a follow-up question. I think that, Frank, you've kind of sparked for me. So just to clarify, in that response, so then Who is your audience? How do you describe that audience? And I'm thinking back to Kyle's earlier point about, you know, the breadth of folks that we might name for an audience might be too large, right? So I just want to know, tell us again who your audience is. And then my original question was, tell me more about who's in the ensemble. How many cast members do you imagine? Your musical orchestra or band? How many, what types of instrumentation are you thinking of? I would just love to know more about the materiality of your, of your musical.

Okay, I'll have Josh answer the music part, but I can probably give the characters. Now obviously the one that we were looking for, I think the first question is, I'm sorry, repeat the first question one more, that first question one last time. I didn't want to get it clarified.

Yeah, who's your target audience? And then after that, tell me more about your cast size, band size, types of instrumentation and so forth.

Thank you. Thank you. I appreciate that. Our target audience, we're basically looking for mostly Gen X to Generation Z, people who are basically adults. We kind of would love to reach out to younger people. I don't think the music was as intense as it should be because of, you know, because of language. But we would like to have this cross-section of, you know, of our— of this population who are basically, you know, working functional adults who have to deal with one another. And, you know, they have to deal with racism on a daily basis. I would say that our cast, per se, is very multiracial because the characters who are involved are multiracial. We're talking about Asians, Hispanics, African Americans, particularly performers and musical artists that you probably don't really— you know, there's not a lot of representation of. Particularly people of color. And, you know, we need more of that. So that's pretty much in the mix. And I'm gonna let Josh speak about the musical instrumentation.

And just before Josh jumps in, Eric, the number, do you have like a number for your cast size in mind?

Right now it's a class, it's a total of 13, but they play multiple parts.

Mm-hmm, yep. And in terms of the music, It's going to be a house band which consists of a rhythm section, so that's your drum set, your bass guitar, the acoustic guitar, and of course two rock and roll guitars. Those are electric guitars, along with a DJ, you know, to play the numbers that are more so in the hip-hop.

It's worth mentioning that Joshua is a music teacher and we got to see his children made a guest appearance on Theater Accelerator.

Tim, are we out of time? Yes, we—

I think we do need to move on. Sorry, Kyle, you can save that for the 5-minute Q&A at the final Q&A, please. All right. Thank you, Team American Skin. Well done. Let's please move on. We have another beautiful piece to show you, and we have Kim Bixler to tell us all about Frank Lloyd Wright.

Hello, my name is Kim Bixler.

I grew up in a house designed by architect Frank Lloyd Wright, and I started giving tours when I was 8 years old. My mom actually typed up these little note cards for me. And I would stand on the fireplace every time, and I would begin my tour the same way. I live in a house designed in 1908 by architect Frank Lloyd Wright for widower Edward E. Boynton and his 19-year-old daughter Beulah. I teamed up with an architect animator from Bangladesh who loves Frank Lloyd Wood, right? And a composer from Iceland that I met at NYU Tisch's Musical Theater Graduate Writing Program. Consider the possibilities of AR/VR. With those, you can experience it.

Constructed, crafted, now savor the space, a long ago place.

Receive it. In 2012, my third book, book was published, Growing Up in a Frank Lloyd Wright House. I've also been featured in a PBS documentary, and a decade ago I started doing speaking engagements all over the country. Now, I knew our house was special, but what really captivated me was Frank Lloyd Wright's personal story. How could this poor farm boy from Wisconsin grow up to be one of the greatest architects in history? And how can a visionary be so blind— blind to how his actions were undermining his own career and every Every time his career is on the rise, he sabotages it. Frank flees to Europe at the height of his career after having an affair with the client's wife. His designs are constantly running over budget, but Frank's world comes crashing down on August 15th, 1914.

Cryptic message laced with dread. Is she dead?

Is she dead? Is she dead? Is she dead?

A member of Wright's staff commits a heinous act of murder and arson, turning his wrath upon 9 people.

Surround the room with gasoline and bolt the doors. Danny wants to see. 1 down, 8 to go.

Hatchet strikes a fatal blow. She's dead, no more lover. Kids try to run for cover.

2 down, 7 to go.

Why I gotta kill?

You need the Lord, but I'm hurting.

You need the Lord. I was a little worried about my audience during the pandemic, which tends to skew older, but I was amazed how many embraced the new technology, quickly adopting and even mastering Zoom and remote learning platforms. I even continued doing school presentations. I decided to take my full-length musical about the remarkable life of Frank Lloyd Wright, The Visionary with a Blind Spot, and break it into a series of mini musicals full of videos, photographs, original songs, and stories. And then I saw the application for Apples and Oranges Theater Accelerator program, and I remembered these videos that one of my Frank Lloyd Wright group members, Razin Khan, had created.

Frank Lloyd Wright.

Razin had sent me a video on my birthday of the house I grew up in, and I reached out to him and he told me he had multiple videos of the house. It's one of his favorite houses houses, and he does this for fun. And he also had over 100 renderings of other Frank Lloyd Wright houses. And his dream, and now mine, is to bring many of Wright's lost, destroyed, private, and never-built houses to life using technology. And of course, I'd love to musicalize them. To get started, we are asking for $94,620 to help with our technological needs. I'd love to have Razim come to the US for a visit. He hasn't even seen a Frank Cloyd Wright House in person. And if Rezin is able to devote more time to creating these works he's doing as a hobby, that would be incredible. Also, I'd love to build a bigger team comprised of people that are experts where I am not. An updated website is also essential, along with a bigger social media presence. Finally, Rezin and I would love to do a TED Talk one day, either together or separately. Our goal is to bring Frank Lloyd Wright's design and his dramatic life story to more people using these emerging technologies. I'd love to see a series on a streaming platform, perhaps an immersive experience in a museum, and AR/VR seems like an incredible opportunity well suited for this visionary architect.

Thank you.

And thank you, Kim. And thank you, Frank Lloyd Wright, for those beautiful pieces of architecture. I'm so intrigued. Judges, let's talk about it.

Kyle.

Hi, Cam. Great presentation. I have a question for you, and it may just be the confines of time. I have a feeling you have a really good answer to this question, so I'm going to ask it. You make a lot of assumptions that people like Frank Lloyd Wright or care. Why should they care right now? What I don't hear— I know why I care, I do, My husband's an architect too, so like I come from a— I understand. But I'm— what's not in your story is what we're supposed to take away as an audience or an experiencer that's supposed to kind of enrich our lives, frankly, apart from the beauty of the spaces.

Well, I think that that's why I'm also focusing on the man, on Frank Lloyd Wright. He was just such an interesting character. I mean, so charismatic and really his own worst enemy in every turn. And also If you're looking at somebody who was born at the start of the Civil War and he lived until the dawn of the Space Age, I mean, that's pretty remarkable. He designed over 1,100 buildings and structures, and he kept on changing things. So, I don't know, when I give these student— these talks for schools, it like opens their eyes.

Is it— yeah, totally. Is it you stick with it long enough and you're going to have an impact? Or slow and steady wins the— like, what's the— what I'm missing is kind of the central theme of this, truthfully, because he was something of a problematic character in many ways. And as so many stories are looking to be told right now, frankly, you're going to have to do a really good job of convincing people why this is a story that needs to be told. And I agree with it, but I'm saying what's in this present— it's not in this presentation is why now, why him, why does he need to be celebrated more? What can people take from that? That would be my— I would encourage you to kind of really dive into that and say, here's what people can pull out of this that's applicable in today's really messed up world, and what's going to change our perspective in our lives right now would be what I would say you kind of need in all of this personally.

Right. Excellent, excellent feedback.

Frank.

Excellent presentation. I am the opposite of Kyle in that I don't give a rat's patootie about Frank Lloyd Wright. But I thought your presentation was well, well done. You, you described very effectively to create, at least for me, a hook of who doesn't like to learn of the challenges of those, you know, who have reputation of greatness and other things, and then a lifetime like that where he's done all that stuff. That seemed kind of interesting to me. I wasn't 100% sure on the description of it till I got toward the end. I think you did a really good job of describing how to use technology to tell your story. I don't know if this is the right story to tell, that is not my skill set, but the way you've described the, uh, how you broke it down, the components, um, things like that, I thought you did a phenomenal job.

Thank you.

I really have to give credit to Tim and Pamela too because they opened my world up. I was like, oh, this is very interesting. There's so many possibilities.

And yeah, the tech part was great. You listen and you, you take, you can take feedback really well. Yeah, thank you. Next question. Deborah had a question.

Just quickly, just, I'll, I'll, um, ditto Frank. Um, I thought the presentation was great and I had the privilege of seeing it early on, and it was amazing that you made, and I really got, um, what you were trying to present to all of us. And so congratulations on that. Um, you know, I don't have any specific— I'm going to just comment on the feedback that you've gotten from the other two panelists here, and I wonder if there's anything to explore in the fact that you grew up in one of these houses. And maybe that's— it just strikes me. I mean, the whole reason you got— you decided to do this is as a child you were fascinated with where you lived and the— and how the house came to be. And then you discovered all these things about this person. But especially right now, I think home is so important to all of us and where we're traveling home to? Where is home? What does home mean? There might be something to explore there. It's not my, my place to do that. I'm just listening, listening to the other comments and giving you that feedback.

Yeah, I appreciate it. Yeah, that's, that's my most popular talk, honestly, is my experience living in the house, and especially for children. And when I was a third grader giving those tours, I just love this story. Two of those of my best friend, two of my friends they end up being architects. And they said, it was truly because we saw that house when we were kids, and I remember you giving this tour.

I love that. That's great.

And as I was a curmudgeon earlier, I will say this— I, which was a bit harsh, it's been a rough week, sorry, Kim— but what I would say is this, um, the reason I asked that question is because I know for a fact, because my husband dragged me kicking and screaming to every retrospective that ever existed, that his one of his main drivers, despite who he was as a human, which is a different conversation, was really towards community and the way people interact with each other and the way space can create community and impact how we live and treat each other. And so I think that is a through line worth exploring, but it's not here. So I think it's less about, oh, how nice, not that that's great, and you can tie your experience to that, but his genius spanned so much and none of that work was ever seen or explored because it frankly was impossible to build. But there was this really interesting idea that so many architects in the '60s and '70s explored around utopia and our— how our spaces work and what that does, that I think is a really interesting concept to think about now as we talk about the opposite, which is being responsible with the size of our spaces and how we live and what that impacts our community. So I think there's something to think about there that if you're going to do this as a through line, I would really explore those themes to make it relevant to today's world.

That'll be my 6th talk. I'll work on it.

Thank you. Thank you, all the judges, and thank you, Kim. We're going to move forward now. We have Keaton Wooden with us to tell us about Death and Harry Houdini.

Hi everybody, I'm Keaton Wooden. I'm a co-composer and co-creator with Death and Harry Houdini. I'm going to start us with a quick clip of the show, which is actually about halfway through the show, where Harry's mentor gives him a piece of advice on the day that his father died. And how it shaped him in life. A moment here. At the end of a tale, you want to know that the work in the winding and finding the end of the story, you have to know there was purpose, and it wasn't some pretty thing that dissolved in your hand like a frail ringing bell. So the trick of the tale you tell is to make it so grand and amazing that nobody's scared when it doesn't come back. That's what life is, a disappearing act. Right, um, so this piece is actually based on a play by Nathan Allen of the House Theatre in Chicago that ran for 20 years across the country. In part, it's successful because Harry Houdini as a name is incredibly well-known. There was a survey actually across the world that asked who was the most famous American celebrity between Elvis Presley and Harry Houdini, and Harry Houdini won by a landslide. He's basically this fascinating brand that everyone knows about. Nathan and I have been working remotely from Chicago to New York while he lets me very generously adapt his play into a musical here at UC Davis where we're doing our developmental production on Thursday. And people have tried to make Houdini musicals in the past, but they haven't worked out, and in part because they haven't found a true way in, I think, is the way we would say that. The truth is, though, that the easiest way into Harry's story is the moment that we're living in right now. We are living in the middle of a technological revolution, and Harry was obsessed with technology. He incorporated light bulbs, movie cameras, the electric chair, electricity into all of his acts. He also, though, saw the dark side. Harry was born just after the Civil War. He lived through World War I. He essentially lived through some of the first ever man-made mass death events. And as we've kind of seen recently, this technological revolution does have a dark side and that there is suffering. And Harry found himself obsessed with this sort of personified creature of death that haunts him throughout the story as it comes in and saws his father in half as a child. And so he uses his journey as a magician mission to create Death Defiance, this sort of magic-filled manifesto to inspire the people around him to not fear death. So in this show, he swallows razor blades, he walks on broken glass, he escapes straitjackets, and he does get dunked into the water torture cell every single night. And there are no shortage of ways that technology plays a role to perform this show or an audience outreach. But our next steps are to work towards first funds for full orchestration and a 29-hour reading in December, and then outreach to a regional theater for development and production. What I want to leave you with, though, is the opening scene from the original production that inspired me to turn it into a musical. And despite it now being almost 15 years old, why it still feels incredibly urgent to me today. So I'm going to click play on that video and then we'll open up for questions afterwards.

Ladies and gentlemen, be warned.

Your admission includes admittance to a tour of that deepest, darkest dimension far beneath the big top and well beyond backstage. So keep a hand on your wallet and an eye on your wife. If you've come with a lover, hold on to them tight.

If you've come by yourself, well, you're fucked.

For tonight, for your titillation, we tell a tale of one man's battle to liberate his body from the bonds that bind us all.

Will he prove our valiant savior or food for the conqueror worm? As your narrator du jour, I promise you that never heretofore and never therefore after will you witness a depiction of such thorough superstition, well beyond the bounds of fiction, yet told with absolute As the tale told tonight on this stage. For what man can save us from death? What man can stand against that almighty atrocity?

Who is our heretical hero of history book fame?

Who is that dashing daredevil, dangerous deed-doer, capable of such hyperbolic extension that no tongue can tie him down, no chain can chain him, no cuff can cuff him?

Master prestidigitator, escapist extraordinaire, breaker of bonds, magician, Wizard, warlock, lord of the world, and handcuff king! Who?

I ask you, who? What is his name?

2, 3, 4! Tonight we bring you an event unrivaled in any Fordville house, in any dime museum hall, in any crazy carny beach jump freak show, floor show, or sideshow.

We give you We give you mystery.

We give you death. And Harry Houdini.

Thank you, Keaton. Well done. Judges, let's turn it over to you. Questions? Who's got a question? Deborah. Deborah.

So I don't want to take up all the questions, so jump in, guys and girls, women. Um, correct me, is this the video that we just saw is from the play that has been running? It is, yeah. And so there is music existing in the play?

Yeah, there are about 4 songs in the original play.

Okay, so that's, um, And are you incorporating that into your musical? Absolutely.

Nathan and I are working together to sort of look at what the full translation into a full musical looks like, which is what UC Davis has been very generously sponsoring us to do for the past 2 months.

And you're doing your workshop or reading at UC Davis?

Friday. Next Friday. Okay. Okay.

I don't have any other questions. I just want to say I'm really rooting for someone to create a musical about Houdini because I'm fascinated with that guy, with that character. So congratulations for getting out there and giving it a go. Thank you. Great presentation, by the way. Thank you.

Okay. Next question. Jonathan.

So this is, um, yeah, I thought that's pretty good. I know it's pretty compelling. And I think, um, it's sort of just, you know, comments for the, the broader group in terms of watching your presentation and your punchiness. Um, it's something everyone can learn from because there's a lot of, you know, you're very clear on like what it is. And when you're an investor, you're like, what am I buying? Um, and what is it you're trying to sell? And you have a much— and then you're— you have the benefit of having, I think, a more developed script that's already been tested. So my question is, but what I'm seeing here is this is straightforward, good old-fashioned live theater, right? There's no VR, there's no gadgets, there's no— like, we're not— we're going to some virtual reality world that, you know, old people like me don't understand. Like, this is just good about a really gristful story.

That's what we're—

that's what I'm seeing here.

There is an opportunity, and we, you know, one of the reasons I was interested in—

that's not a bad thing.

I'm saying the main, the main stream production is live theater, is sort of the Natasha Pierre, Cirque du Soleil, Vegas crowd, or a little Broadway to Vegas pipeline. Um, but scalability is where I think Apples and Oranges was such a great lesson for me, because we were looking at 360 cameras. We were— I was looking at ways that we can incorporate a headset, because one of the criticisms of going online or in video for magicians is that you can make an edit and that ruins the magic trick. Because you can just cut. But if you're in a 360 camera, you can't cut. And so you could, you could do scalability for this show, is sort of our thought.

And are you really, is it, are you also just doing some live magic tricks on stage that are actually, people are going, wow? Is there that element as well?

Absolutely. I mean, one of the reasons this has to turn into a musical instead of continuing running as a play is because the actor who played Harry Houdini has only ever been one person. And it was a fifth-generation magician, Dennis Watkins of Chicago, and he can't get dunked in the tank anymore. He's waterlogged. Yeah, permanent prune hands.

All right, I will add to that.

I'm, I'm also thrilled it's kind of like a traditional theatrical component, but what I would say to you, Keaton, which is really cool, is which I'm sure Tim's already said or someone said, um, you're like candidate number one for using any number of metaverse applications, AR applications, as a driver to get people into the theater to experience it as a marketing tool, as opposed to necessary— which is still a storytelling tool, but like a story expansion component for the purpose of getting people to buy tickets. Yeah, that's super cool. And what I love about the story— I agree with Deborah, I've always been interested in him as a person— I think what's cool about it is yes to magic tricks, but also seemingly what was so incredible about him too, to your point, is kind of what the brand he built around himself, the mystique, right? Like that whole component of it that's so interesting, and I think really relevant today in many ways, depending on who you're talking about. So I think, love it, very cool. I'm gonna have to switch to my other phone because I have to run real quickly, but really great work.

And time, the actual time era that it takes place is 1910 to 1920s, did you say?

We scan his whole life, you know, the play starts the day he's born and ends the day he died.

Which is what period of time?

1860 to 1874 to 1926.

1874, 1926. Okay, so you have a lot of that sort of like more set in the sort of the '15s to '20s era, the sort of the Roaring '20s, that sort of—

there's a little—

yes, kind of.

Well, yeah, the, the creature that chases Harry is wearing a World War I gas mask. It's sort of a a creature of the modern industrial age. Okay.

Yeah.

Next question. We have time for one more, and if not, we'll continue on. Oh, Dr.

Ama.

Thank you, Keaton, for your presentation. I just— I'm enjoying everyone's work. Okay. I, you know, two things. One point that resonated with me and a question. Earlier when you said that Houdini himself was invested in technology and light bulbs and cameras and just being reminded that whatever the story is asking us to tell on stage or in VR, XR, AR, we follow what the story needs. So I really love hearing that you're in that development process right now. And so second, the second question is, what's your biggest need, your biggest need as a team in the work that you're navigating right now? What's that biggest ask that you have for us?

My work? Huh? Sorry? Money.

Someone said money. It can be a mix of those things.

For me though, I mean, I think with all artists it's time. You know, we have another musical that has sort of a war chest, if you will, but this is a project that I'm doing solo as a composer. Which just means I need time to sit next to a piano and I need time to work with an orchestrator and build it out. This has to be a large-scale sound. Natasha Pierre is very much the sound that we're going for, this Eastern European folk that then turns into the Roaring '20s and turns into classical and craziness. And that just takes a lot of time. There's a band that we want to hire to orchestrate named Muca Pazza in Chicago that's the creepiest marching band you've ever heard of in your life. But, you know, you'd need, you'd need 2 weeks to let them be creepy. And, you know, there's things like this. Just development time is really our, our number one resource right now that we need.

Fantastic. Well, thank you so much, Keaton, and everyone else. We're going to move on to our last pitch. We have now Joey Contreras and Kate Thomas with Forget Me Not.

Hi everyone, super nice to meet you virtually. We're excited to share our show with you today, so here we go.

What would you do to keep from being forgotten?

Who would you betray if it meant you'd be remembered? And what would it cost you? I'm Kate Thomas. And I'm Joey Contreras. And we're the writers of Forget Me Not.

In 1998, a whale washes ashore in a coastal town and brings a burst of attention to the isolated community. Townspeople initially welcome the interest, but that all changes when a journalist decides to reopen a cold case that has long haunted them.

See, 10 years earlier, 3 local women had been strangled on the beaches of Forget-Me-Not Cove, but the murderer was never found. So when Pete Medina, the brother of one of the victims and our journalist, returns home to reinvestigate after a decade— <LYRICS>So Dad was right, I used it all and got out of here.</LYRICS> He and his fellow townspeople are forced to confront the grief they have buried.

This stunning dive into the past leads to an explosive reveal and ultimately collective healing.

Loosely inspired by the Long Island serial killer and the 1970s exploding whale, which is a real thing, this new ensemble musical is a meditation on identity and community, on memory and media, and on finding hope in the face of unthinkable tragedy.

Over the last 2 years, we've brought audiences into this original story and heartfelt score, and already the response has been amazing. Now to get to a little more of the nitty-gritty.

When we first started sketching this show 6 years ago— okay, don't age us— 6 years ago over cocktails, always over cocktails, we've been friends a very long time.

We landed on setting our story in an isolated seaside community because we wondered What would happen if a crisis occurred in a town like this? A town that receives very little media attention or police surveillance.

And how could that crisis support the story of forgotten women?

We felt it was imperative to have these female characters, our girls, our ghosts, haunt the show.

So we built a narrative that would support their memories and would vibrate between flashbacks and real time.

Telling this story now feels significant when we look at the number of women from disadvantaged backgrounds who are missing or murdered and receive little to no media coverage.

<LYRICS>Little girl, little girl, little girl missing.

Little girl, little girl, little girl missing.</LYRICS> This most strikingly applies to women of color, women from low-income and geographically isolated communities, and women holding stigmatized professions.

When you compare the lack of attention given to those women with that of Gabby Petito, or Natalie Holloway, it is a stark contrast.

And a gut-wrenching one. And it is precisely why killers prey on these women.

Why we felt compelled to write this piece.

Why is one family's pain amplified while another's fades to black?

Why is one loss more significant?

Who in America decides you're only missing if you're missed?

This show is a love letter to anyone experiencing loss or struggling with identity.

It's a tribute to the spirit and resilience found in community. It's hope. It's forgetting.

It's remembering.

And all the heart and heartbreak of everything in between.

With your collaboration, we are looking to secure a world premiere production of the show.

We are also super eager to adapt the musical into a film or limited series.

And because of the emphasis on forgotten women and their families, it is imperative to us to raise awareness through whatever medium we choose. And this is where VR and AR could come into play.

See, we have a fantasy of every Broadway playbill, for example, having a QR code on the back of it.

And so then every audience member, after scanning their QR code through their phone, would be brought to a page featuring a real-life missing woman or girl. They would then be able to read all the details surrounding the case, see a map of her last known movements, and have the opportunity to donate to an organization supporting her search. The more immersive, the better.

The possibilities are endless, and we hope that you feel inspired to collaborate with us. We want to connect.

We want to serve.

We want to move people. Thank you for your time and consideration, and we hope you forget us not. Thank you.

Thank you, Kate and Joey. We promise we will not forget you. And I'm sure the judges have some wonderful comments and questions. Who's up first?

There's a lot of thinking going on.

You didn't say based on a real life story, right? This is, but it is more notionally, right?

It's an original musical.

So did you have any original inspiration for it or just sort of the social issue? that you kind of listed through?

It was a combination of social issues, but probably the initial source of inspiration was the story of the Long Island serial killer victims, the Gilgo Beach Five, and really being fascinated with that case in particular. And then also randomly, Joey brought the 1970s exploding whale to me when, you know, this town, the small town in Oregon, these townspeople ended up strapping dynamite to a whale that was beached because they thought that that was perhaps the right way to dispose of, of her. Um, and so that was such a wild thing to absorb that we just kind of put our hands together, true crime with sort of like a wacky, sort of off-the-wall component.

So get me from the, the beached whale to the missing and exploited women. Like, how is it? Because it draws press attention to the town and they uncover the spooky secrets and, and the mystery that they get to, you know, it's like too much attention from outsiders. It's kind of 100%.

You got it, you got it. The whale is the inciting incident that draws attention back to the community after, you know, the previous serial killer case went cold 10 years, 10 years before the whale. And so it brings our protagonist Pete Medina back home, and he decides, you know what, I'm ready to reinvestigate, I'm ready to open up this case again, and I guess, you know, the whale is my excuse. Okay, okay, got it.

And do you think you're portraying the small town— I think I didn't— I'm being kind of— do you think you're being respectfully portraying small town as full, fully dimensional people, or as these sort of, you know, some— a lot of these musicals can really descend and they sort of portray them as rude stereotypes, you know, living in flyover country? Do you think you're getting— do you think you really got the characters right dimensionally?

I really like to think so. I mean, we've definitely been working hard on the piece for the last 6 years, and we're certainly not aiming for them to be one-dimensional. We consider the piece to be an ensemble musical, so it's not just centered around our 3 girls and Pete Medina, our protagonist. It's centered around several people within the community. And so our hope is that our whole cast is feeling connected to the piece and feeling like their voices are heard. And in development, if we ever get any feedback that is saying, hey, we feel like you're one-dimensional, We're certainly the kind of writers that would be like, oh, please let us take a listen to that. And we would work very hard to make sure that wasn't the case.

So you think maybe you would say you would dress the small town characters sort of the way that maybe Come From Away did or something like that, sort of real people, but not a bunch of, you know, yeah, absolutely.

Yeah, I'm gonna say Come From Away is more of the kind of vibe and energy of the ensemble nature of the show.

Thank you.

Excellent questions, clarifications. So what else?

I'll have a question. I apologize for the vocal quality, I had to run for a train here, my apologies. But, um, I will say I love how you're weaving the true crime thread in and really addressing kind of the humanity of it. That, I don't know, I'd love to hear your thoughts if you think that's often overlooked in the genre because there's just so much of it currently. But I love how you're doing that.

I think there's a real thread in there.

I think it perfectly weaves together what is a very successful and popular genre with what we try to do when we do our best work in theater, which is kind of explore these themes of humanity and overlooked stories. So is that part of kind of why you created this, is a love of that genre and kind of that's a missing piece? Or how do you think about that, actually? And I'd imagine that would come very handy as you probably will inevitably talk to HBO or someone about something like this down the line.

Yeah, I mean, you're, you're, you're saying things that we are very aware of, and we We'd say that that's exactly where our mind is at. You know, Kate and I both love kind of the true crime Netflix, you know, influx of all of those murder mystery stories and everything. And even when we were beginning to approach this project, I think a little part of us was trying to figure out how to straddle that line. And, um, and, and through the development and through really carving out this story, we realized that the show, while it has that bit of eerie and mysterious and true crime vibe and energy to it. We're really focusing on these families, the heart, the grief, the humanity behind it. It's less about the actual killing and more about the humanity behind it.

Totally. It makes sense.

All right. With that, we are going to move forward. And I'm going to give you a little refresher, judges and audience out there, of our 7 incredible shows. And judges, you're going to have one last opportunity to have a short question or two for any team that you need clarification from. First, we have the Sustain: Sex, Love, and Rock and Roll Never Sleeps. The Magician Society of Manhattan. When three troubled teens wind their way down deep into the New York subway in order to perform rituals, they unexpectedly get trapped, face their deepest fears, and discover a different type of magic. Roboticus. A short battlebot geek tries to self-actualize as a giant mega robot, leading to the ultimate battle with self. American Skin. After experiencing a car crash, DJ and his two racist friends find common ground with real-life Americans killed because of their skin color inside a Coney Island sideshow. And Frank Lloyd Wright. A poor farm boy from Wisconsin relentlessly pursues his dream of becoming a visionary architect failing to recognize his own blind spots. Death and Harry Houdini. At the turn of the 20th century, a young man transforms himself to inspire the masses and cheat death at every turn. But death has other plans. And lastly, Forget-Me-Not. When a journalist reopens a cold case that has long haunted a forgotten coastal town, his stunning dive into the past explores hope in unspeakable tragedy and the power of collective healing. All right, judges, any last questions for our teams?

And teams, you can turn on your cameras now, please. Frank.

A question for Death and Harry Houdini. Um, just so that I understand, it's an existing play that ran for roughly 20 years, and you've used that as the basis and you're modifying that to make it a musical.

Is that correct? Correct. Nathan and I are adapting it from the original play into a full musical.

Was it on Broadway at any point, or was it Off-Broadway, or—

No, it premiered at the House Theatre of Chicago in 2001 and then has done tours in Miami and Los Angeles.

Okay, thank you.

Dr. Alma.

To the Everyteam, thank you so much for your presentations today. My follow-up questions are for a few different teams. So first, I'm going to go quickly. Let's go back to the Sustain. Just to confirm again, the New York Times article that you saw that photo, are you— is that the underlying intellectual property to your musical, or is yours entirely original and the video just sparked— sorry, the photo just sparked the idea of going into this world?

The photo just sparked.

It is entirely original. Perfect.

Thank you. And let's see, Caitlin, thank you again for The Magician Society. That the timeliness of the subject matter really resonates with me. And I'm wondering, are you exploring having support services available for you, for your creative team, and for participants, given the weight of the subject matter?

Definitely. I've explored, you know, I've actually reached out in the past last year or so to different organizations, nonprofits, you know, to, you know, mental health nonprofits to explore possible, you know, partnerships in a capacity, you know, being able to have, you know, mental health lines that you can call, you know, a call to action of a certain sort that there is, you know, please do reach out, please, because that's one of the themes is to reach out, you know, reach out for help. Everyone needs help. So absolutely. But I love that idea too, of making sure we have it as a team too. So thank you for that. Great. Thank you, Jonathan.

And I'm going to pause there.

Go for it. Oh, did you have another one, Dr. Amma?

I have two more, but I want to yield the space, share it. All right.

I'll go Jonathan and then come back to you. Okay.

I have a, I think I got this right. I got a question for Roboticus. There's a lot of, there's some technology in there that's of his invention. So as part of an investment, is he willing to give percentage ownership in the technology itself?

Oh wow, this is like a real Shark Tank. That's my job.

That's my sort of archetype on these, the greedy capitalist archetype.

I would need assistance and conversation with Howard to find out what are what's owned by me and what's owned by other inventors in terms of my component, the current patent component has to do with how we visualize sound in all media. So it relates to audiograms, it relates to how you reveal sounds in science. And so there's overlap there. Wow, what a question. I have all these designs that I've not shared with anyone about new robots that I want to make. I think that is a really intriguing idea if we basically— because then we can partner in how we're going to build the robotic arch, and then it's not dependent on the singular show, although I hope this show is a hit, but it could actually be a replica, replicatable item on its own. So yes, I am open to that.

Okay, all right, thank you. And I think that's actually generally for— I would— all of you that are sort of delving into new technologies sphere, like you think about, think about your IP and what is like your, what are you, what are you inventing and is patentable versus, you know, because that, that's, you know, that could be that, you know, that could be worth more than your intellectual, your, your, your show.

So, well, yeah, I've had quite an adventure dealing with, um, patent attorneys the last 3 years. Well, that's my hearing visualizers. Okay. All right. Great. Thank you.

And back to Dr. Amma, please.

Great, thank you. Kate and Joey, thank you for Forget-Me-Not. I, I am still thinking through your musical and the story that you just presented, so I'm— it's like living in me for a moment. Um, one question for you: what's the biggest challenge that you're navigating right now?

I would say the biggest challenge that we're navigating right now is simply having a door open to us. I think the story is pretty big, the cast is relatively large, it's about a 20 to 21 person cast ideally, and so I think I think that we need more money and more resources. And I think that people are also a little bit scared of the content to a degree. I think that maybe going the true crime route feels like a risk. We think it's a risk that really is going to pay off. But I would say that there's just been a little bit of a barrier up in terms of you're such a big show, and you're such a big show that's saying a lot of serious stuff, but it's a very hopeful show. So, it's just finding someone who's really willing to take the chance. And we believe that person is out there.

Um, on that too, just, it is, it is a bigger cast, and then there's also very specific casting type as far as diversity goes. And that is also, you know, we have had the opportunity to, uh, work with universities, but, you know, they have to have the, the, um, diversity in the student body to also, uh, put on the show. So that's been something that we've been focused on, you know.

Deborah, did you have a question? We have time for one more.

Just quickly, for American Skin. Yes. Can you talk just as briefly as possible about the, the component of One Nation, the museum component, and how, how does that connect to the production of American Skin? How do those two connect, overlap complement each other?

Sure, we would like to, if we're ever doing a production, maybe if it's in a regional production or somewhere that's in an off-Broadway house, we would like to maybe partner with a museum that's local, that's national, that will coincide together. It'll be either produced at probably around the same time. It would be kind of a great opportunity for me, particularly for the younger audiences, particularly to be able to see be that because it'll be more G-rated because the musical itself is more PG-13, maybe a little bit too risqué for the young people, but it'll get a chance to actually increase our demographic numbers.

Great, thank you for that clarification. Thank you.

Okay, we're gonna let the judges pull out their Sharpies, their mechanical pencils, or whatever it is that they use to do their calculations. We're going to give them 2 minutes to divide up that virtual dollar. While we do that, we're just going to share a few couple quick things that you can follow along in the world of apples and oranges. Next week, we're going to be talking about the future of the art form up at the Augmented World Expo in San Jose, which they are also recording that. So if you cannot make it physically, you can see the recording. Of us sharing at a global level how we're bringing entertainment and XR together. Also at the end of the year, the show that we built in virtual reality for the reading and lab phase is going live on stage at the Discovery Cube in Santa Ana in the November-December timeframe. Keep a lookout for that as well as the virtual elements that will be going tag team along with it. We recently launched our Broadversity initiative. It is through our nonprofit, and it is a way to share information for any of you that want to follow along the path for the next 10, 20, 30, 50 years. We use easy ways to get in so you don't ever feel like, wow, I can't spell VR or AR. On the right, you will see Sasha, who joined our team and had never put on a headset and is now making videos about all of the mind-blowing experiences she had. Kyle Wright, who you mentioned earlier, is joining Pam and I to start a podcast series. And then we're using other forms like traditional blogs to share this. So please sign up for our newsletter if you want to learn more about the coming of the technology world. We had a fun little contest during the week where each team was allowed to put up a video on our YouTube channel and the video that wins the gift certificate. And this one actually comes with not a virtual prize, but a gift certificate prize. Drum roll. Oh, I went too fast. There it is. Franklin Wright. Yay, Franklin Wright. You won for the most views on the YouTube channel for the week. Congratulations.

Congratulations, Kim. And if you've had fun today and you'd like to give more opportunities for artists to hone their craft and learn how to be creative entrepreneurs, please go to our donation page, which is pledge.to/ano. And we thank you in advance for all of your help and all of your love.

I think we are at time right now.

Okay. All right. It's time to dive into the math and for our judges to start divvying up their dollars. So remember, this is all done in fun. Does this really mean anything if you get $0.05 more than somebody else? No, we're doing it in fun. So let's bring back our judges. I have. Great. And then we'll start, please, with Deborah.

I think I'm more nervous than you guys are. And So just know that right now. As, as Tim and Pam mentioned earlier, this is my 12th time doing this, and I started with them early on. And I'm gonna say right now, I think this is the hardest one I've ever tried to figure out. You all have such interesting, compelling stories. Each project has It has, you know, this unique technology piece to it, and it's rooted in an interesting, compelling, relevant story. And, you know, as they know, if I could give $100, if it was all— it would always be the same no matter how much. If I could give you everything you wanted, I would do that because I think each piece is worthy of that. Having said that, they only gave me a dollar, and I have to divide it up. And I'm going to put on my true producer hat as I divide up this dollar given where you are in your process. And I just wanted to start off with just going through each, each one of the projects and giving you just a few notes. On the Sustain, you guys did a great job. It's a great presentation. I actually do think you have a broad audience to reach out to. Everybody has a connection to your story. The one thing I would agree with, with Kyle, is to really go back and consider your core audience and perhaps take a look at your title. It's hard to figure out what this is just based on your title. That's something that I would take a look at, but I am going to to start off by giving Sustain 5% of my 100% of that dollar. Moving on to the Magician Society, Caitlin, your passion for this is incredible, and I absolutely agree with you. It's the right time, it's so relevant, and it resonates for a lot of reasons. And I'm going to go ahead and give you a 5% of that dollar as well. I think to consider exploring more of where this piece lands and the creative team behind it, particularly musically, is something I would work on with that piece. The next piece that we went to was Robotikus. Is that right? I'm trying to go in order. That is correct. Jay-Z, you're amazing. I love you and you're just so much fun to be, to watch. You've got an interesting core story. You're right in the tech world in bringing live entertainment and tech in together and merging those. And was it Frank who, who broached the subject of, do investors get a percentage of your technology? Was that, was that Frank, or I'm sorry, who? It was Jonathan. Jonathan, you I mean, you really got my brain going with that question. So thank you for that. I'm going to give 20% of my 100 to Robotikus. Moving on to American Skin. Is that the next one? I want to make sure I get these in order. Is that correct? American Skin. I love, I love what you guys are trying to do. Lots of questions I have about the future of that project. But your energy is amazing. The music is fantastic. I can't wait to see where you go with this. And I'm going to give you 15% of my 100. Moving on to Frank Lloyd Wright and Kim, this is a really interesting piece and I can't wait to see where you go with it. Lots of different avenues. And I'm really excited to see that TED Talk. And I'm going to do 10% of my dollar to, to Frank Lloyd Wright. And then moving on to Death— sorry, for Death and Harry Houdini. Is that right? Correct. Okay. As a producer and as a— just right off the bat, the— where you are in the trajectory of this piece, I'm giving 30% of my dollar to the Houdini project, and that's all. I think you guys are pretty far along and I think it's a great piece. I think audience— there's a very interesting audience attraction to that piece. And then the final piece, Forget Me Not. Is that where we are? That is correct. I'm going to— I love— I wanted to hear more of that music. I think the music sounds really interesting. I'm also very intrigued by the missing persons component to your piece, particularly as it deals with women. And I don't want to take up any— I could say a lot more, but I'm going to give 15% of my dollar to Forget-Me-Not. Did I get the math right?

You did. We have a running calculator. You did it perfectly. Thank you.

Thank you, everyone. All great presentations. You all deserved the whole dollar.

So thank you. Thank you, Deborah. And next up we have Frank.

Can you hear me okay? Yes. Great. Again, as Deborah said, everyone did a phenomenal job. I appreciate that she credited me with Jonathan's insight on tech, on capitalism, but I just, I sit at Jonathan's feet in awe. So to run through these, in the Sustain, I really appreciate the focus on our joys instead of complaints in life, and thought you guys did a great job in your presentation conceptually. I'm at 25 cents on you guys. Magician Society, I really thought you had a great use of alternative tech So I really enjoyed that part of it. Roboticus, I really liked your focus on tech and your enthusiasm. I don't know if I got this right, is absolutely compelling. As far as American Skin, it's just like the music was so engaging and connecting, really enjoyed that. And again, the enthusiasm, look forward to seeing you develop that out a little bit more. The Frank Lloyd Wright, for me, I really enjoyed the concept of those sub-stories and how you put all that together. So I would put 50 cents there. Death and Harry Houdini, that seems like a phenomenal platform for technology. So I'm 25 cents there. And I really liked the backstory for Forget-Me-Not. So I look forward to learning more about that as we go. That's it for me.

Fantastic. Thank you so much, Frank. You've also been a long-running judge, and we love your feedback. Next up, we have Dr. Ama.

Hello, cohort. Congratulations. What a wonderful milestone and achievement to get to Sing Tank. I— if you could hear me with my video off, I would I was singing along to all of your songs, and it is a joy to hear how you are presenting your work to the world and how you're presenting your asks and what your greatest needs are. I took— I'm taking a page out of Deborah's book. Deborah, you did this for our cohort a couple of years ago, and I subscribe to the philosophy that when we have only one pot of resources and we have artists who are in front of you, we're gonna take the starving out of artists. Then I wanna share this equitably across the board. So I'm giving you cold hard cash in the, in the form of 14 cents. And, you know, with the hundredth of 2 eights after that for each team. But let me tell you some additional investments I'm doing for each team. So the sustain, I am bringing to you the other demographic of 65+ audience members that are Black women in Atlanta. That are the biggest theater-going audiences down here, because that story of folks across every age being able to love and desire and be passionate in life is what is needed. So I know so many age groups that would watch your show, and I'm bringing them with a lot of enthusiasm. Maybe not after church on a Sunday, but I'll bring them there to see your show. The second investment, in addition to the 14 Cents Caitlin, Oh my goodness. Yes. I already told you my question was around making sure you all have the support necessary to do this important timely project. I heard that you have that, that need to work with Meta and other companies. I want, I hope that that unrestricted 14 cents helps you to go ahead and just play and experiment to your heart's content, to what the show needs, but also I'm bringing in a double investment of Showing up with community. I think Kyle's point is so key. Having audience members and participants experience that narrative and that go through that experience together and collectively will help mitigate the isolation that we know comes along in some place, in some aspects of navigating that journey of suicide at that particular, in that particular age group. So I'm bringing community and lots of community as part of that investment. Robotikus. Ah, Jay, you are revolutionizing and breaking open the theater space in every way. Your orchestra art and all kinds of things. So I am doubling down and bringing more connections your way so that we can co-found and co-build with you the $140 million-plus fully accessible theater so that your story and so many other musicals and stories can happen fully immersive in all of the ways that we can't even imagine right now. Cannot wait to see your show. American Skin, Eric and Joshua. Wow. I am investing in the two of you and putting on your radar other tech companies who have been exploring similar themes, uh, as your One Nation project. That's a precursor to the, um, the, the, the main stage of your show. Uh, so there, there are tech companies, and particularly Black tech companies that premiered their work at the Sundance Film Festival in 2021 and 2022. And artists like Stephanie Dinkins, I want to make sure that you are a part of their community and they're a part of your community. Because that— yes, you all are exploring similar themes, and I just cannot wait to invest in connecting you all in that way. And those final 3 shows, Frank Lloyd Wright, listen, oh my goodness, Kim, You had me at any historical musical that helps me understand something that I never— I didn't know about. So I know Frank Lloyd Wright, but I don't know about him deeply. So any musical that helps me to understand the depth behind a historical name, I am here for it. But in particular, your story came to life for me with those archival images and all of the, like, really like, wait, what happened? Wait, what? What? I want to know more. And that hook, that particular hook that you have of growing up with in the space of history and history moving through you to tell the story, I'm investing in that. So Kim, yeah, let's get that TED Talk connection going for you as well. Daphne, Harry Houdini, Keaton, I heard that biggest need, that song, and also that your song was still playing in my mind as well, that the scene that you showed with the main character surrounded by the instrumentalists, I cannot wait to see this show. And I heard your biggest need is time. So I'm investing in let's get you the time that you need. In addition to the $0.14, we're just going to create time. So what do we need? We need to give you a house. Let's take you down at the Kashanis' house at Disney World. Tim and Pamela, let's give him a residency and give him the time that he needs to be with this show. And finally, forget-me-not, how can I— I cannot forget you at all. Kate and Joey, I have heard the refrain from lots of folks that will say the show Show's too big. You gotta put it smaller. Show's too big. I am doubly investing in the idea that you should have the luxury of all the tools of production that you need to play and see what your show needs to be. So if that means we're strategizing and to your point, Joey, of like recognizing some universities don't have the resources even in casting, then let's ideate ways in which we can make sure you can experience a full 25-person cast. I know you said 20 to 21 or so, Whatever you need, let's figure out how you can actually see the vision of your work. So that's my response with my investments, with my dollar, sharing across the board, but then doubling down on the external investments that all artists need. So thank y'all. Dr.

Alma, thank you so, so much. Amazing. Wow. Amazing. I am going to read Kyle's investments for you, and then we'll end with Jonathan here. Who's live still. Kyle has put 10 cents to Roboticus, 20 cents to American Skin, 30 cents to Death and Harry Houdini, and 40 cents to Forget Me Not. Excellent. That leaves our final, final judge, and let's welcome Jonathan back to the stage.

Uh, okay, you can hear me?

Yep. Yep, we're good. Okay, great.

So I just want to give you guys just a little bit about— it'll pop up here— how I think about this. I definitely come at this as an investor. It's kind of my— Tim and Pamela have wanted me to do over the years. So I really think about this in terms of portfolio allocation, path to revenue, risk-reward, and It just, you know, because there's especially, we have a number of, you know, works in here that have, you know, addressed a lot of important social issues. I don't want to say, I don't think those are important, but I'm sort of every playwright's worst nightmare. It's like, I just want to go to the theater, be entertained. I mean, I liked Cats, so, you know, it sort of tells you like, you know, who you're dealing with here. Like, I live in Florida, like, but I'm the audience sitting there with all the disposable income, so I guess I get to say. So anyway, um, but I also would say this is the— this continues to get better. It's one of the best classes, um, I've seen, uh, and congratulations to everybody. And I don't— all— and they will tell you I have definitely zeroed some people out here, and I'm not zeroing anyone. There's, there's cash for everybody, but I think it's going to reflect where things stand. So sustain, um, I, uh, Dr. Al's point, like, I think keeping this a small and portable show Uh, is very valuable. There's a, there's a community up the road for me called The Villages where this is living. I mean, and I don't know, there's some— they have very colorful lives and very active romantic lives based on STD transmission rates in the Department of Health in Florida says. So, um, so I think that's a very viable— it's serious topic, and that's the audience. So that's 20 cents to that one. Uh, Magician Society— my problem on this one is any experience— I'm also a technical neophyte, as I said earlier. So when we get into the new technology, I don't I don't quite know, like, the thing is like, what's, how do I get paid is what I don't know is as an investor is what I'm thinking. And the other thing is the 18 to 29-year-old subset, while they have a lot of really important social issues, they don't have any money. And so as an audience, it's like, again, how do I get paid, right? And so I don't, but I think, you know, there's, yes, but so revenue visibility and really picking out in your pitch, Like, you gave a lot of what you could do, but you're gonna have to pick a path and tell me, like, in 3— everyone, like, every investment pitch, if you can't explain it in 3 bullets, like, you're not selling it. So, and that's investments, that's shows, or whatever. So get that sharper and tell me, like, how do I get there? Um, that's 5 cents that's worth it. Um, Roboticus, uh, that's going, um, I like the energy. I think it's just a charming presentation and enthusiasm. I would not anchor with a joke on $140 million. And I'll tell you why. It's because when you ask for money and you ask for a number that's too high, and then you joke about it, and then you say, but from you, you know, since you're a deadbeat, you know, I'll take $140,000. It embarrasses the person that they may, you know, that you may not have it. So just be careful about that kind of, that kind of humor, especially in a pitch meeting. Like if your jokes fail, the whole meeting is done. So just be careful. Um, but I thought it was interesting. I would definitely want a piece of the IP. Um, that's Tencent's, uh, American Skin. I think that, uh, clearly important equity, social issues. It's all, you know, definitely, you know, a part of the, you know, the American dialogue right now. But like you said, it's almost— I don't know if this is a not-for-profit that's going to be in museums and educational versus whether it's commercial or not. So, you know, but I said that's 10 cents to continue developing the idea. Frank Lloyd Wright, I apologize, I've never done this, but I had a call during this. I did not see every bit of the Frank Lloyd Wright, but I sort of get the thing. I think anything you have an interesting historical character, that's gonna be, that's got something to work, that's got something to grab, people are gonna grab onto. So that's 5 cents. I think, you know, Death and Harry Houdini, like, you make the title of Death in the title of a musical, and I want to think about that, like, it's a little bit of a bummer. So maybe there's a more interesting, more grabby title, but I think that there's just so much grist here. And when I think about path to revenue, where the story lies, size of audience, the '20s, the Cirque du Soleil piece, the magic. There's just a lot. There's— it's just further along. And, you know, I'd want to see statistics. I want to see audience numbers. I want to know how it did in Chicago, how— I mean, the play is different, but, you know, but, you know, you have a lot— you have some probability of success just because you already have a tested story. 40 cents for that. Um, and then Forget Me Not, I just think it's like— I think it— I think your headcount's pretty big to start out, so you gotta show me a— you'd have to show me a budget that really tells me how you're gonna— how you're gonna pay 20 to 21 equity actors, or wherever you start, or in the college, or wherever you're starting out. Um, but I think there's some good piece— bits and pieces here. And, um, uh, and, uh, you know, it's a little bit, um, like, you know, I sort of talked about Come From Away. It's a little bit Manchester by Sea, but hopefully not as depressing. Um, and, uh, but in terms of the story and the sort of the grist of the sort of New England town or whatever. So that's 10 cents. So that's my allocation. Thank you all for your hard work and good luck on keeping your ideas going forward.

Thank you so much, Jonathan. And he is correct. He— this is actually, I think, the first time you've split your dollar up that way. So congratulations to all. Let's get everybody back on stage, Pamela. Absolutely. Come on back up, everyone.

And congratulations, job well done to all. And I want to thank our judges and thank all of our participants for these last 2 weeks. It's really been a joy for me, and I hope it has been for you as well. You know, we never stay strangers after these 2 weeks are over.

And Tim, do you have a tally? I do have a tally. It was close, and it was Death, even though the title Death is leading up front, and Harry Houdini, which got the most pennies in the virtual dollars. But everybody had a very nice investment in their overall structure. So what a fantastic way to end these two weeks. For sure.

Congratulations, Keaton, and congratulations, everyone. I want to say a big thank you to our Apples and Oranges team. We have Christopher Sepulveda, Ido Gall, and Sasha Pensanti. Without them, we can't put this on. And thank you, audience, for joining us and being interested in helping take The Starving Out of Artists. Please stay in touch. And until next time, take care. Bye-bye.