Eight Short Musicals Will Be Premiered Live In Hollywood

Eight brand-new fifteen-minute musicals will have their world premiere LIVE ON STAGE on July 13 and 14 at the Broadwater Mainstage in Hollywood.

The 15 Minute Musical Project concludes each season of NMI's world-famous Core Curriculum of the writers' workshop, offered through their academic branch the Academy for New Musical Theatre, which has been in existence for over 40 years. For the final project of the curriculum, composers and lyricists and book writers are put together on writing teams and are given three short months to write, revise and polish a brand-new musical written for four actors whom they've never met before.

"It's like a rite of passage," says Elise Dewsberry, NMI's Artistic Director and producer of the 15 Minute Musicals. "We design the process to imitate a full-length show in a professional theatre: draft, rehearsal, rewrites, rehearsal, opening. It's really a wonderful experience, but it's often stressful, just like a million dollar opening night. Our writers' names are in the program, and it's important to them they write the best show they possibly can, in the short amount of time we've given them."

This season there will be eight 15-minute musicals, featuring two different casts of four actors. The evening is entitled: Crimes and Misdemeanors: eight new musicals about getting away with it, and the writing teams have cooked up eight wildly different approaches to this theme ranging from an alligator robbing a Wendy's to a bank robber caught in an endless loop to a mother who comes back from the grave to a pair of twins haunting their murderer - and much more!

These evenings are an annual highlight of NMI's year-long season of developing new musicals and feature many new voices in musical theatre. Every seat in the house usually sells out.

You can see all eight shows each evening (July 13 and 14):

The BLUE Program:
Alligator - book and lyrics by Abel Alvarado, music by Nathan Douglas Scalise
For Richer or For Poorer - book by Kim Bixler, music by Michael Steven Turnblom, lyrics by Greg Beattie
Between COVID and the Deep Blue Sea - book by Celeste Chan Wolfe, music and lyrics by Benjamin Emory Larson
Back to Your Grave, Ma! - book and lyrics by David Harry Yoon, music by Michael Vegas Mussman
Directed by John Coppola; Music Director Ron Barnett; Stage Manager Kim Iosue
Starring: Carrie Lynn Certa, Max Havas, Stephanie Rojo, and John David Wallis

The RED Program:
The Haunting Crimes of Dave - book by Makena Metz, music and lyrics by D. Michael O'Dell
Down the Isle - book by Davern Wright, music by Lisa Maria Sedares, lyrics by Jackie Brenneman
Inside - book and lyric by Elizabeth I. Simko, music by Orlando Byron
Broken Tree Lane - book and lyrics by Lawrence Cousineau, music by Anton Chesnokov
Directed by Scott Guy; Music Director Marc Macalintal; Stage Manager Timothy Michael Reyes
Starring: Elizabeth A. Bouton, Lauren Byrd, Nyx Ciel, and Chris Smith

Tickets are $25; the performances begin at 7:30pm. For tickets, reservations and more info: https://nmi.org/15-minute-musicals-2021/.