A Decade of New Musicals

Millikin's New Musicals Workshop celebrates 10th anniversary

It's not often that theatre students collaborate with a professional playwriting team to develop a new musical production. The New Musicals Workshop, through Millikin University's School of Theatre and Dance, takes that process of collaboration to the next step, a step where students get insider access to writing and finessing works for the musical stage.

Celebrating its 10th anniversary in 2017, Millikin's New Musicals Workshop provides different experiences, styles, approaches, experiments and people with which to collaborate every year. This year is no exception as Millikin students worked with the playwriting team of Sam Carner and Derek Gregor. 

"We know from alums that the relationships developed in the workshops carry over into opportunities in their professional careers," said Lori Bales, associate professor of theatre and dance at Millikin. "Students are often called by our writing partners to help further develop material because of the partnership experiences garnered through the New Musicals Workshop."

The workshop provides professional writers with a laboratory environment where they can use the talents, skills and resources that Millikin theatre students and faculty have to offer. Millikin students have the opportunity to serves as actors, production managers, stage managers, directors, accompanists, coaches and apprentice playwrights.

New Musicals Workshop

This year's cohort workshopped Carner and Gregor's "Unlock'd" and "Island Song." "Unlock'd" was presented in a public showing on Jan. 23, in Kaeuper Hall on Millikin's campus. "Island Song" garnered five MAC-nominated songs and was being workshopped for licensing. "Unlock'd" was produced off-Broadway at the Duke Theater in summer 2013 and was being workshopped for a large production in Houston, Texas, in early 2018.

"The format of the workshop meets all professional standards and expectations in the development of new musicals," Bales said. "In this workshop the students put into practice all curricular objectives. The theory and technique get 'real-life' practice in a room with professional third party stake holders. The end result is a symbiotic relationship; artists collaborating with artists to develop new art."

The New Musicals Workshop was first developed and piloted by Lori Bales with musical direction by Kevin Long, artist-in-residence at Millikin, in 2007 after Bales attended the National Alliance for Musical Theatre's (NAMT) annual conference. NAMT is a service organization whose mission is to support the development of new musicals; Millikin has been a member since 2004.

"Working with professionals provides students with a stronger sense of confidence and assurance that Millikin has prepared them for professional success," Long said. "This impacts their technique in that they have a greater understanding of the relationship between the music and the written text with a deeper, more sophisticated perspective."