COSTS OF LIVING and More Set for Village Theatre's 16th Annual Festival of New Musicals

Village Theatre is proud to announce the line-up for its 16th Annual Festival of New Musicals, taking place in Issaquah on August 12-14, 2016. It will be the first Festival of New Musicals led by newly appointed Associate Artistic Director Brandon Ivie.

Village Theatre's Festival of New Musicals began in 2001 as part of the Village Originals program of readings, workshops, and developmental productions, which allows a fledgling piece of work to evolve through multiple stages, often culminating in a 10-week run on Village Theatre's Mainstage. The Festival has long been a nationally renowned birthplace of new musicals and the foundation of Village Theatre's commitment to new work.

This year, the Festival's five readings will include Costs of Living by Timothy Huang, How to Break by Aaron Jafferis, Rebecca Hart, and Yako 440, We Foxes by Ryan Scott Oliver, String by Adam Gwon and Sarah Hammond, and Writing Kevin Taylor by Josh Halloway and Will Van Dyke.

The five new musicals, representing a wide variety of thematic and musical genres, will be brought to life through the creative collaboration of nearly 75 artists and writers, performed and directed by the region's foremost theatre professionals and guest artists from across the country. The weekend will also include the Northwest Songwriters Showcase, a celebration of local composers. The Festival of New Musicals provides an essential platform for writers to incorporate a key component of Live Theatre: the audience. Each new musical will be rehearsed throughout the week, then presented to the Festival's audience in staged reading format, fully sung using scripts. Though readings are not open to the general public, audiences are partly comprised of Village Originals members who are asked to participate in moderated talkbacks and provide written feedback and constructive critiques of the work, thereby becoming an integral part of the developmental process.

Village Theatre will welcome to Issaquah the critically-acclaimed musical theatre writers at the helm of the new works, who will convene from across the country for the three-day event. "I'm so pleased with the five shows we will have in residence for the festival," says Festival Producer and Associate Artistic Director Brandon Ivie. "While all are at different stages in their development and vastly varied in style, these writers are all incredibly sophisticated with exceedingly unique voices, and are an inspiring testament to the future of the American Musical." Between the writers, the festival will host four Richard Rodgers Award winners (Gwon, Hammond, Huang, Oliver), as well as recipients of the Jonathan Larson Grant (Oliver), the Kleban Prize (Gwon), the Jerry Harrington Award (Huang), the Fred Ebb Award (Gwon, Huang [finalist]), and a Dramatist Guild Fellowship (Huang). Outside of theatre, Josh Halloway, book writer and lyricist of the musical comedy Writing Kevin Taylor, has also received a Writers Guild Award and an Emmy-nomination for his work on Jimmy Kimmel Live!.

With a dedication to the development of new musicals that achieve national exposure, Village Theatre's Village Originals program and Festival of New Musicals have spawned such musicals as Next to Normal, winner of three Tony Awards and a Pulitzer Prize, Million Dollar Quartet, nominated for the Best Musical Tony Award and Outstanding Musical Drama Desk Award, Stephen Schwartz's Snapshots, and It Shoulda Been You, which played Broadway in 2015. During the upcoming 2016-2017 Season, the new musical A Proper Place will be featured on Village Theatre's Mainstage, having been developed in the Festival of New Musicals in 2014.

COSTS OF LIVING

Book, Music, and Lyrics by Timothy Huang

In Manhattan, two immigrant cab drivers share a single taxi, working opposite shifts - one slowly climbing the ladder of success by day, the other suffering a series of disappointments by night. Their fates become irreversibly intertwined as forced competition drives a wedge between them that culminates in a desperate act and deadly consequences. Inspired by an article in The New York Times, this high-stakes rock musical examines the marginalization of the immigrant working class and the arbitrary nature of American prosperity.

HOW TO BREAK

Book and Lyrics by Aaron Jafferis

Songs Composed by Rebecca Hart

Beatbox Score by Yako 440

Additional Lyrics by Rebecca Hart

Originally conceived by the Mixing Texts Collective

Ignited by an electric collision of theatre, breakdancing, and lyrical flow, this musical follows two young inner city dancers as they battle for control of bodies wracked by illness. Tensions rise as small gaps in race, class, and language between the patients and their treatment team create life-threatening rifts. As the nurse mixes the patients' breath and IV beeps into beatboxed hospital soundscapes and the doctor and therapist wrestle over the health benefits of art versus painkillers, the teens attempt to break through their diagnoses in search of a gut understanding of what it means to be ill.

WE FOXES

By Ryan Scott Oliver

In the small town of Havoc, Missouri at the onset of World War II, a tough, unmannered orphan girl is plucked up from her vagabond life, adopted into a world of style and social graces by the beloved wife of the local sheriff. But in her new, unfamiliar life, she begins to discover that there are sinister secrets beneath the shiny veneer of this small town. Her adopted mother is not who she seems to be, and people are lurking in the dark. This gothic musical thriller follows one girl's struggle to summon courage and survive at all costs.

STRING

Book by Sarah Hammond

Music and Lyrics by Adam Gwon

On a mountaintop high over ancient Greece, three sisters - goddesses known as the Greek Fates - are responsible for spinning, measuring, and snipping the String of Life. After falling out of favor with Zeus, they find themselves stuck in a drab modern skyscraper, left to live and work among world-weary office workers and the security guards who watch over the building. But when the workaholic eldest sister misplaces the scissors she uses to snip lives, her destiny gets all tangled up in this musical fable about love, fate, and the fragile fabric of the universe.

WRITING Kevin Taylor

Music and Lyrics by Will Van Dyke

Book and Lyrics by Josh Halloway

A novelist in New York City is stuck in a rut. With two successful books to his name and a much-anticipated third book overdue, he has lost his inspiration - and now, focused entirely on his work, he has lost his wife as well. After his facade cracks on public television, he resigns himself to life as a bachelor - that is, until an enthusiastic teenage fan arrives on his doorstep offering to be his intern. Before he knows it, his imaginative new employee hatches a scheme to reunite the writer with his wife in this high-energy, hilarious story about finding friendship and inspiration in unexpected places.

Village Theatre's mission stipulates a dedication to the development of new musicals that achieve national exposure. The Village Originals program of readings, workshops, and developmental productions represents one of the strongest commitments to new musicals in the nation, developing such musicals as Pulitzer Prize-winning Next to Normal, Tony Award-winning Million Dollar Quartet, Drama Desk Award-winning Cupid and Psyche, Stephen Schwartz's Snapshots, and the Drama Desk Award-nominated It Shoulda Been You, After the Fair, and Making Tracks. Village Theatre is one of the few resident theatres to provide regular opportunities at every step of musical development, from first table reading to full-scale premiere production. Each season, new works are included as part of Village Theatre's Mainstage five-show lineup alongside the classics. Anchored by the annual Festival of New Musicals, the Village Originals program is dedicated to the continued growth and evolution of musical theatre, and a determination that the form will remain vibrant and relevant for generations to come.

Based in Issaquah, WA, with operations in Everett, Village Theatre is a leading producer of musical theatre in the Pacific Northwest. Producing entertaining, quality productions for the entire family since 1979, Village Theatre has grown into one of the region's best-attended Equity theatres, with over 19,000 Subscribers, 200,000 projected total attendance each season, and an annual operating budget of over $12,000,000. Through its Village Originals program, Village Theatre is nationally recognized for its contribution to the development of new musicals, having launched over 145 new works to date. Village Theatre also takes pride in nurturing tomorrow's audiences through its youth education programs, Pied Piper and KIDSTAGE, serving over 55,000 young people, families, and schools annually.