IRA GERSHWIN CONCEPT GRANTS to Support Early Musical Development

The National Alliance for Musical Theatre (Betsy King Militello, Executive Director), in partnership with The Ira & Leonore Gershwin Philanthropic Fund, has introduced the Ira Gershwin Concept Grants, a new initiative supporting the earliest stages of musical development rooted in existing songs, stories and cultural touchstones.

The new program will provide grants ranging from $2,000 to $5,000 to eligible NAMT member organizations to investigate bold ideas for new musicals before they enter more traditional development. The Ira Gershwin Concept Grants are designed to create space for theatres and musical theatre artists to test ideas, investigate source material, assess rights and feasibility and begin shaping how an existing work or cultural touchstone might become something new for the stage.

“We are incredibly excited to introduce this new granting program that will give our members and artists resources to explore timeless stories through a new lens, understand the material and its possibilities, and discover what a new musical might become,” said Betsy King Militello, Executive Director of the National Alliance for Musical Theatre. “The Ira Gershwin Concept Grants will allow time for the vital and inspiring early process of asking questions and dreaming, long before a project is ready for a reading. We're incredibly grateful to The Ira & Leonore Gershwin Philanthropic Fund for investing in our shared belief in the importance of this kind of exploration.”

LJ Strunsky of The Ira & Leonore Gershwin Philanthropic Fund added, “George and Ira's work has continued to find new life because artists have never stopped approaching it with imagination and curiosity. Ira understood both the enduring power of great material and the importance of giving artists room to create something new from it. We're delighted to partner with NAMT on a program that encourages today's musical theatre artists to look boldly at the songs, stories and cultural touchstones around them and imagine what they might become onstage.”

Projects may draw from a broad definition of classic American material, including song catalogues and musical legacies, films, plays, novels and other narrative works, historical events, figures or movements, as well as other established intellectual property with cultural impact. The resulting musicals may take equally varied forms, including direct adaptations, musicalizations of non-musical works, recontextualizations of familiar stories, new theatrical frameworks incorporating existing music or narrative material, and hybrid or non-traditional approaches to adaptation and authorship. Grant funds may be used for artist compensation, research, dramaturgical work, adaptation planning, musical experimentation and demos, rehearsal resources, early readings and presentations, rights or licensing consultation and other costs directly connected to the exploratory process. Compensation for participating writers is required.

Submissions for the Ira Gershwin Concept Grants must be submitted by NAMT member organizations in good standing that hold U.S. not-for-profit 501(c)(3) status. Applications will be available on a semi-annual basis, with the first cycle opening in November, 2026. For more info, visit namt.org/conceptgrants.

Songwriters Showcase at the Festival of New Musicals

The launch of the Ira Gershwin Concept Grants will also be celebrated during NAMT's 38th Annual Festival of New Musicals with a special Songwriters Showcase, hosted by LJ Strunsky of The Ira & Leonore Gershwin Philanthropic Fund. The annual Showcase spotlights new musicals and the artists behind them through live performances and conversation; this year's program will feature projects engaging with existing stories, music and cultural touchstones, reflecting the spirit of the new grant initiative and its focus on reimagining familiar material for the stage.

LJ Strunsky is Managing Director of the Ira Gershwin musical estate, overseeing Ira Gershwin's catalog and the development of new projects for stage, film, television and concert performance. She has worked on numerous productions featuring Gershwin music, including Nice Work If You Can Get It, The Gershwins' Porgy and Bess, Crazy for You and An American in Paris. Some of the current projects in development include a Porgy and Bess ballet, a bio-musical about the lives of George and Ira Gershwin, and a limited series about the making of Porgy and Bess. Strunsky began her career in New York City in theatrical touring and booking, and later worked in the recording industry before returning to the West Coast to join the Ira & Leonore S. Gershwin Trusts and the Ira Gershwin Philanthropic Fund. She is a member of the Library of Congress Madison Council and has served on committees for several Bay Area cultural and Jewish organizations.

NAMT's 38th Annual Festival of New Musicals takes place on October 22 & 23 at New World Stages in New York City. Registration for industry members is now open at www.namt.org/festival.

This year, Songwriters Showcase will include performances from new musicals in development alongside live interviews with their creators:

All the Answers

Book by Kate Messner

Music by Haley Bennett

Lyrics by Haley Bennett & Kate Messner

Developed with & Directed by Amy Anders Corcoran

What if you found a magic pencil that could answer almost any question? Based on the 2015 novel by Kate Messner, All the Answers is the musical story of an anxious teenager who discovers in the middle of a math quiz that her pencil magically answers questions in a voice only she can hear. As Ava and her friend Sophie test the pencil's abilities, its answers lead to school-drama secrets, hard family truths and a lot of comedy. Along the way, Ava experiences gutting growing-up moments, heartbreaks and some well-won victories. But as the pencil grows shorter with every sharpening, she's forced to decide what's worth knowing and what's better left to discover for herself. With a soaring contemporary score and a multigenerational cast, this story helps us make peace with our questions and answer the biggest one of all: how we will spend our one precious life.

Kate Messner (Book & Lyrics) is a NYT Bestselling author of 80+ books for kids, including All the Answers and Keep The Ghost Light On, a Broadway ghost story coming in February 2027. She's thrilled to be collaborating on her first musical with director Amy Anders Corcoran and composer Haley Bennett. www.katemessner.com

Haley Bennett (Music & Lyrics) Broadway: & Juliet, Redwood, Diana, Once on This Island, Escape to Margaritaville, Dear Evan Hansen, Come From Away, Anastasia, Bandstand, Paramour and Finding Neverland. Music Supervisor and/or Coordinator for NBCUniversal, Apple TV, Radio City Music Hall, The Ogunquit Playhouse and several Broadway cast recordings. BA in Psychology, Harvard University.

Amy Anders Corcoran (Development & Director) is a director who specializes in new works. New musical premieres as director include: Senior Class (NAMT 2021!) at Olney Theatre Center, The Great Emu War (Goodspeed Musicals), Christmas in Connecticut (Goodspeed Musicals), Unexpected Joy (The York and Southwark Playhouse, London). She also has a new adaptation of Little Mermaid on the Disney Wish. Amy has worked on Broadway, Off-Broadway, in London, and in many theatres across the US. MFA-Penn State, Directing. BA-University of Kansas, Psychology.

Bandit Queen

Music by Amanda D'Archangelis

Lyrics by Sami Horneff

Book by Amanda D'Archangelis and Sami Horneff

It's 1902, and a traveling troupe of actors presents “The Arizona Female Bandit,” a play centering on Pearl Hart, the Wild West's most notorious woman outlaw…and the older sister of playwright and star Katy Davy. But tonight, the real Pearl, freshly released from prison, bursts in on the final rehearsal, insisting the show's 'facts' are fiction. The sisters step into their own roles, reliving their past shaped by abuse, crime and addiction — and forcing them to finally mend old scars live, in real time. Bandit Queen features a small cast of versatile performers and an Americana-inspired score that blends the rich storytelling of the Old West with a contemporary pop theatre sound.

Amanda D'Archangelis (Book & Music) Amanda is a composer and actress in NYC. She holds a B.F.A. in Musical Theater from The Boston Conservatory, and is a member of the BMI Lehman Engel Musical Theatre Advanced Workshop. Credits include: Single Rider (Music & Book, Off-Broadway); The Radium Girls: A Jaw-Dropping New Musical with Sami Horneff and Lisa Mongillo (Directed by Marissa Jaret Winokur) Film: S&M Records which premiered at Newfest in 2023. Upcoming: Hamlet directed by Joel Kirk, Son of Maude with Anderson Cook, Bandit Queen with Sami Horneff.

Sami Horneff (Book & Lyrics) Sami is an award-winning lyricist and bookwriter based in NYC. Credits include: The Radium Girls (Premiering Off West End in 2027); Single Rider (Off-Broadway); Judy Moody & Stink (ArtsPower National Touring Theatre); and Bandit Queen (2026 Lucille Lortel 121 Project Recipient). She is a proud graduate of Brown University and a member of the BMI Workshop.

Letters To The President

Conceived by Michael Bello and Jessica Kahkoska

Directed by Michael Bello

Archival Curation and Dramaturgy by Jessica Kahkoska

Music Supervision by Patrick Sulken

Book by Michael Bello & Jessica Kahkoska

Featuring Songs by Ari Afsar & Candace Quarrels, Preston Max Allen, Simone Allen, Dawn Ieri'hó:kwats Avery, Nick Blaemire, Emily Xu Hall, Elliah Heifetz, Anna K. Jacobs, Naomi Matlow & Teresa Lotz, Madeline Myers, Ronvé O'Daniel & Jevares Myrick, Rona Siddiqui, Mark Sonnenblick, Will Van Dyke & Jeff Talbott, Ben Wexler, Zack Zadek

Since George Washington took office in 1783, writing to the President has provided citizens of all ages, backgrounds and political beliefs an outlet to express their most personal concerns, hopes and dreams. At a moment when civic engagement feels more important than ever, Letters To The President reimagines this canon of letters as a new American musical, featuring prominent guest letter readers and a rich score of songs by some of musical theatre's most exciting composers. Spanning topics from women's suffrage, marriage equality, World Wars I and II, space exploration, and the Civil Rights Movement, Letters To The President offers a powerful look at American democracy by setting the White House's most memorable mail to song.

Michael Bello (Conceived by, Book & Director) is a Cuban American director whose work includes world premieres Letters To The President and We Are The Tigers, with productions at Paper Mill Playhouse, Delaware Theatre Company, Stages St. Louis and Theatre Aspen. As Associate Director, he has worked on Broadway's Tommy, The Donna Summer Musical and Jersey Boys worldwide.

Jessica Kahkoska (Conceived by, Curation, Dramaturgy & Book) is a writer and dramaturg/researcher across theatre and TV. Theatre: The Death of Desert Rose (SDSU New Musicals Initiative), Wildfire (Denver Center, ZSpace), Agent 355 (New York Stage and Film), and archival research for Broadway's Good Night, and Good Luck. TV: Sheriff Country (Paramount/CBS) alongside projects for Netflix, HBO Max, and CNN. 2026 Broadway Women's Fund 'Woman to Watch.' www.jessicakahkoska.com

About NAMT

The National Alliance for Musical Theatre, founded in 1985, is a not-for-profit organization serving the musical theatre community. Its mission is to be a catalyst for nurturing musical theatre development, production, innovation and collaboration. Its 140 organizational members and 60 individual members, located throughout 31 states and six countries abroad, are some of the leading producers of musical theatre in the world and include theatres, presenting organizations, higher education programs and individual producers. In 2024, NAMT reached $1 million in awards to member organizations through NAMT granting programs including the Frank Young Fund for New Musicals and the Impact & Exploration Fund. Among the 300 musicals launched by NAMT's Annual Festival of New Musicals are Come From Away, Lempicka, The Drowsy Chaperone, Lizard Boy, Teeth, Gun & Powder, King of Pangea, Benny & Joon, Darling Grenadine, Ordinary Days, It Shoulda Been You and Thoroughly Modern Millie, among many others, representing 600 writers. This year, over 120 students from 28 states participated in the Musical Theater Songwriting Challenge for High School Students, an initiative of the National Endowment for the Arts in partnership with NAMT.

About The Gershwins

George and Ira Gershwin will always be remembered as the songwriting team whose voice was synonymous with the sounds and style of the Jazz Age. By the time of their 1924 Broadway hit, Lady, Be Good!, George had worked with lyricist Buddy DeSylva on a series of revues, George White's Scandals, while Ira enjoyed success with composer Vincent Youmans on Two Little Girls In Blue. But from 1924 until George's death in 1937, the brothers wrote almost exclusively with each other, composing over two dozen scores for Broadway and Hollywood. Though they had many individual song hits, their greatest achievement may have been the elevation of musical comedy to an American art form.

With their trilogy of political satires — Strike up the Band, the Pulitzer Prize-winning Of Thee I Sing, and its sequel, Let 'Em Eat Cake (all three written with playwrights George S. Kaufman and Morrie Ryskind) – they helped raise popular musical theatre to a new level of sophistication. Their now-classic folk opera, Porgy and Bess (co-written with DuBose Heyward), is constantly revived in opera houses and theatres throughout the world. Concurrently with the Gershwins' musical theatre and film work, George attained great success in the concert arena as a piano virtuoso, conductor, and composer of such celebrated works as Rhapsody in Blue, An American In Paris, and the Concerto In F.

After George's death, Ira continued to work in film and theatre with collaborators ranging from Kurt Weill and Jerome Kern to Harold Arlen, Burton Lane, Vernon Duke, and Harry Warren, among others, writing such standards as “Long Ago (and Far Away)” and “The Man That Got Away,” both nominated for Academy Awards.

Ira's book, Lyrics on Several Occasions, was published to critical acclaim in 1959; it was a unique selection of his lyrics, accompanied by his annotations, observations and anecdotes. In addition to his own career, Ira attended to the details of his brother's estate and the Gershwin legacy. He annotated their manuscripts and consigned to the Library of Congress all the materials that pertained to their careers. In 1983, at the age of 86, Ira died in his Beverly Hills home.

Today, the Gershwin catalog has been taken up by a younger generation who have delighted in vintage and contemporary recordings, revivals, and the “new” Gershwin musicals, My One and Only (1983) and the 1992 Tony Award winner for best musical, Crazy For You. The United States Congress awarded the Congressional Gold Medal to the Gershwins in 1985 (only the third time that songwriters had been so honored), and in 2007, the Library of Congress instituted the Gershwin Prize for Popular Song.