New York Musical Theatre Festival Announces 2007 Dates

The New York Musical Theatre Festival (NYMF), an annual three-week event created in 2004 to smash the developmental glass ceiling and highlight the vibrant community of writers and artists working in musical theatre today, will be accepting open submissions from January 1 through March 1 for its fourth season. This year's festival will run from September 17 through October 7, 2007.

Writers are invited to submit "production-ready" musicals to the Festival's 2007 NEXT LINK PROJECT, for which 18 shows will be chosen by a jury of theatre luminaries. The 2007 Grand Jury will include Adam Epstein, Margo Lion and Casey Nicholaw; past juries have included directors Kathleen Marshall, Susan H. Schulman and Scott Schwartz; producers Robyn Goodman, Kevin McCollum and Jack Viertel; Tony Award-winning writers Jeff Marx, Robert Lopez, Tom Meehan and Marsha Norman; and performers Joanna Gleason and Anthony Rapp, among others. Selected shows will be presented in repertory over the three-week festival in key venues in the theater district.

"The Next Link Project is central to what we do at NYMF, because the open submission process gives equal opportunity to writers at all levels of the theatre community, from working professionals to those whose work has not yet been produced," said Kris Stewart, NYMF founder and Executive Director. "It is critical to our pursuit of the most diverse array of work possible by musical theatre's most exciting emerging writers."

In addition, the 2007 Next Link Project will provide an exciting new resource for its participants designed to maximize the Festival experience: in the months leading up to the Festival, the 18 selected shows will have access to professional dramaturgs to help them expand, develop and fine-tune their scripts for production.

"It has always been our feeling that NYMF should be a launching pad for promising works rather than an endpoint, so it has been our top priority each year to provide more and more tools to help writers make the most of this opportunity," said Isaac Robert Hurwitz, NYMF Executive Producer.

Hailed as the "Sundance for Musical Theatre," NYMF has produced 913 performances of 256 events, including 99 full productions, to date. The 2006 Festival set numerous records, with overall attendance growing more than 65% from 2005, to more than 36,400. Sold-out houses and strong reviews have led to commercial options and additional productions for many festival shows, including Altar Boyz (NYMF '04, still running at New World Stages), [title of show] (NYMF '04, two sold-out runs earlier this year at the Vineyard Theatre), Nerds://A Musical Software Satire (NYMF '05, Philadelphia Theatre Company, opening January '07), The Great American Trailer Park Musical (NYMF '04; New World Stages, August-December '05), Captain Louie (NYMF '04, The Little Shubert, '05), Shout! The Mod Musical (NYMF '04, The Julia Miles Theatre, '06), Meet John Doe (NYMF '04; Goodspeed Musicals, '06; Ford's Theatre, '07), The Big Voice: God or Merman? (NYMF '04; Actors Temple Theatre, opening November '06) and Gutenberg! The Musical (NYMF '06; 59E59, opening November '06).

Applications for The Next Link Project can be made through March 1st on the Festival website, www.nymf.org. NYMF is a flagship program of the National Music Theater Network, a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit organization and is made possible with public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts, a state agency, and the National Endowment for the Arts.