Polyphone Festival to Take the Stage with Four New Musicals This Spring

Now in its third year, Polyphone, a "festival of the emerging musical," returns to the University of the Arts' Ira Brind School of Theater Arts with four new musicals.

The 2017 Polyphone festival, March 28-April 1, will continue to challenge audiences with the question "What is a musical?" and provide an artist-driven opportunity to take young musicals into an exciting and loose concert format.

Each new work presented at Polyphone is stripped down to an off-book, staged concert with a full band, inviting audiences into the evolution of how musicals are made. The festival brings together artists-in-training, emerging composers, librettists, choreographers, and directors developing new works to present four musicals over five days at two locations.

"Polyphone is an opportunity to engage in a radical exploration of contemporary musical theater," said César Alvarez, a UArts visiting associate professor, composer, lyricist, performer and the festival's artistic director. "Polyphone lifts up musicals and artistic voices that are under-supported and under-developed by the musical theater establishment and seeks to be a home for young musicals and young artists. In doing this, both are pushed further because of their encounter with each other."

Bringing together artists, theaters, producers and students in Philadelphia and beyond, Polyphone represents an institutional effort by the University of the Arts to change how musicals are born. By transforming the education of young musicians and theater makers, Polyphone dedicates university resources to promising emerging artists in the field in an attempt to make a lasting impact on the quality and aesthetic scope of the musicals that get produced.

"Each musical presented as part of the festival explores a different path for what the musical form can be. And by distilling the musicals down to their essence, the resulting performances are explosions of song and story which vibrate on the boundary between concert and musical," commented Alvarez.

Polyphone will feature performances of four new works including "Folk Wandering" conceived by Jaclyn Backhaus and Andrew Neisler, book and lyrics by Jaclyn Backhaus, directed by Andrew Neisler; "Normativity" with book, music and lyrics by Jaime Jarrett, directed by Rebecca Wright; "The Real Whisper" with music and lyrics by Greta Gertler Gold, book and lyrics by Akin Salawu, directed by Nell Bang-Jensen, and choreography by Amy Smith; and "The Best Songs in the World Show," a new musical by Red 40 and The Last Groovement, with music, book and lyrics by Martha Stuckey in collaboration with The Last Groovement, and directed by Anisa George. Alvarez has served as Polyphone's artistic director since its founding in 2015.

On Saturday, April 1, Shakina Nayfack, actor, writer and artistic director of the Musical Theater Factory in New York, will deliver the Polyphone keynote address on the topics of community, identity and activism in musical theater.

April 1 will also feature a marathon day in which audiences can view all four works beginning at 12 p.m.

All performances will take place at the Merriam Theatre (250 S. Broad Street) and the Arts Bank (601 S. Broad Street) which are located in the heart of Philadelphia on the Avenue of the Arts.

For more information, visit www.uarts.edu/news/2017/03/polyphone-festival-returns-third-year. To purchase tickets, visit: universityofthearts.ticketleap.com.