This week on the Filmed Live Musicals podcast, host Luisa Lyons chats with actor/dancer/singer James T. Lane.
Topics include the influence of Robert Guilluame and the importance of being able to see people that look like you on stage, Forbidden Broadway and movie musicals as a gateway to musical theatre, Jesus Christ Superstar, A Chorus Line, coining the phrase “sad understand”, working at the Jen Waldman Studio, words of wisdom from Baayork Lee, why writers and artists should share their work widely, and the development and staging of James’ new play Triple Threat: A Play That Moves and Sings. James T. Lane is an actor singer dancer based in New York City. A true triple threat, he brings joy, electricity, nuance, humor, and heart to roles on Broadway, across the United States, and throughout the world. James's powerful love for his craft and for his fellow human beings shines through in all that he does. Learn more at www.jamestlane.com and follow James on Instagram and Twitter.
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In episode 20 of the Filmed Live Musicals podcast, host Luisa Lyons chats with Broadway on Demand CEO and President Sean Cercone.
Topics include theatre on public TV being a gateway to live theatre, how being a good son-in-law led to the creation of Broadway on Demand, how streaming can help authors and help shows build their brand, sport as a model for live-streaming, the importance of a theatre archive, and much more! Sean Cercone is the CEO and President of Broadway Licensing and its family of companies, which includes Dramatists Play Service, Playscripts, Stageworks Productions, and Broadway on Demand. Together, these companies represent the world’s first 360º theatrical development, producing, publishing, and digital and traditional distribution outfit. Between Broadway Licensing (musicals), Dramatists Play Service (non-musical plays), and Playscripts (educational productions), Cercone oversees the licensing of nearly 24,000 productions each year, working with more than 2,800 authors and managing over 6,725 titles. Stageworks Productions is dedicated to the development, production, and distribution of innovative live theatrical properties, focusing on cultivating stories that speak to the universal truths of humanity. Broadway On Demand, launched in 2020, is the industry’s premiere entertainment streaming platform offering exclusive livestream theatrical events, a wide-ranging library of video on demand content, interactive engagements, and educational programming. In addition, Cercone created a unique licensing interface, ShowShareTM, which provides student, amateur, and professional productions the opportunity to stream their productions for global audiences. ShowShareTM proved instrumental in ensuring thousands of shows could go on even when the pandemic forced the cancellation of live performances around the world. Broadway On Demand has been honored with the 2021 Corporate Award by the American Association of Community Theatre (AACT). https://www.broadwayondemand.com/ https://broadwaylicensing.com/ https://www.dramatists.com/ https://www.playscripts.com/ https://stageworksproduction.com/ The Filmed Live Musicals podcast is available wherever you listen to podcasts, including Apple Podcasts, Amazon, Google, Overcast, Stitcher, Spotify, and more! If you like what you hear, please make sure to subscribe and leave a review!
This week, host Luisa Lyons chats with actor Jalynn Steele about the upcoming livestream of Titanique the Maiden Voyage Concert. Titanique is a new parody musical that reveals what really happened to Jack and Rose on that fateful night, as told by Céline Dion!
In this laugh-filled chat, we talk about the joy of performing, going to State for theatre, what Jalynn learnt during the pandemic, performing with COVID restrictions, The Lightning Thief: The Percy Jackson Musical, and the importance of diverse representation on Broadway. Jalynn Steele is an energetic light placed here on earth to shine joy to everyone. Through the years she has graced many stages across the world and is extremely excited to join the awesome cast of Titanique! Credits include; Broadway: The Lightning Thief: A Percy Jackson Musical, Off Broadway: Sistas: The Musical, National/International Tour: Fosse, Regional Theatre: Mamma Mia, Beehive, and Little Shop of Horrors. Other credits include; Sesame Street, After Midnight, Rock of Ages, Burn the Floor, The Wiz, Songs for a New World, and recently, many virtual performances. Her life’s creed, “Live, laugh & love!” Follow on Facebook and Instagram. Titanique the Maiden Voyage Concert will be livestreamed at 7.30pm EDT on May 2. Tickets are available from Stellar. The Filmed Live Musicals podcast is available wherever you listen to podcasts including Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify, Stitcher, and more! If you like what you hear, please leave a review and help get the word out!
This week host Luisa Lyons chats with Filipino-American artist Lourds Lane - book writer, composer, lyricist, arranger, and violin-playing co-star of the new rock musical SuperYou. The musical was scheduled to open off-Broadway in May 2020, but was postponed due to the pandemic. Instead, a concert version was performed on the back of pick-up trucks at a drive-in in upstate New York. The concert was filmed and is available to stream on Broadway on Demand!
We talk about how music inspires, how writing music for a touring rock band helped Lourds write a musical, the Medusa Festival, the intensely personal inspiration behind SuperYou, why the team defied industry malaise at the start of the pandemic and staged the drive-in concert, how the concert was filmed, and putting your work online. Learn more about Lourds Lane at www.lourdslane.com and SuperYou at www.superyoumusical.com. SuperYou is available to stream on demand until April 15, 2021 at Broadway on Demand.
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Thank you to the Filmed Live Musicals patrons Josh Brandon, Mercedes Esteban, Rachel Esteban, James Lane, David Negrin, Jesse Rabinowitz and Brenda Goodman, Al Monaco, David and Katherine Rabinowitz, and Bec Twist for your support.
Filmed Live Musicals is the most comprehensive online searchable database for musicals that have been filmed live on stage. Follow us on Facebook and Twitter. You can also support the site at Patreon. Patrons get early access to content, no matter how much you pledge.
On episode 17 of the Filmed Live Musicals podcast, host Luisa Lyons chats with the Creative Director of HMDT Music, Tertia Sefton-Green.
We chat about HMDT Music's extraordinary children's theatre education program pre-pandemic, the fortuitous decision to downscale in 2019, and the new female-led musical Jina and the STEM Sisters. The musical is available to stream on demand worldwide until April 11. Book your tickets here! HMDT Music, twice winner of the prestigious Royal Philharmonic Society Award for Education and of the 2020 Excellence in Musical Theatre Award, is a leader in commissioning inspiring musical works embedding the arts across all areas of learning for young people. Key successes include: Trench Brothers commemorating ethnic minority soldiers in WW1; Shadowball ground-breaking baseball and jazz opera; Hear Our Voice international tour of a new work compiled from children’s Holocaust writings. HMDT runs an extensive Saturday Music Programme and arts-rehabilitation projects for young offenders. Their Creative Director Tertia Sefton-Green has created, commissioned, managed all their large-scale projects in addition to fundraising and writing some of the libretti. She also conducts their I Can Sing! music theatre programme. Learn more at www.hmdt.org.uk.
Thank you to the Filmed Live Musicals patrons Josh Brandon, Mercedes Esteban, Rachel Esteban, James Lane, David Negrin, Jesse Rabinowitz and Brenda Goodman, Al Monaco, David and Katherine Rabinowitz, and Bec Twist for your support.
Filmed Live Musicals is the most comprehensive online searchable database for musicals that have been filmed live on stage. Follow us on Facebook and Twitter. You can also support the site at Patreon. Patrons get early access to content, no matter how much you pledge. Despite the fact that we’ve been filming theatre since the invention of cameras, and that the first live theatre broadcasts took place in 1939, many still don’t know that filming stage shows and releasing them for public consumption is a thing. And when folks are aware of filmed live theatre, there are usually two reactions. Either they are either afraid of it because they think it will cannibalize ticket sales, or they dismiss it entirely as “not theatre”.
To the first point, as I’ve written previously, there is little evidence to suggest that filmed live theatre cannibalizes ticket sales — mainly because most captures are released in the final days of a show’s run, or after it has closed. For musicals that were released during a run, such as Legally Blonde, Phantom of the Opera, Les Miserables, or Daddy Long Legs, ticket sales stayed stable, or were boosted, by the filmed live release. Despite research that shows that audiences find watching theatre on screen a viable alternative, I don’t entirely disagree with the folks who ascertain filmed live theatre is not theatre. It falls somewhere in between the live theatre experience and a movie. Terms that were used a lot pre-pandemic included filmed live theatre, live cinema, transmission, HD transmission, cine-cast, pro-shot, and live capture. Some recent big Broadway name examples, Hamilton, Come From Away, and Diana (it’s fun to note that both Diana and Come From Away are directed by Christopher Ashley, who also directed Memphis, which was filmed live on Broadway with an audience in 2011) show that there is no consensus on what to call filmed live theatre. The filmed live version of Hamilton is billed on Disney Plus as “the Original Broadway Production,” and is referred to in press as the filmed version, filmed presentation, filmed performance, filmed version, Hamilton movie, recorded performance, live capture or live-capture, and streaming version. When tweeting the announcement of the filmed live release of Hamilton, the musical’s composer Lin-Manuel Miranda called it “Our Hamilton film”, and used the hashtag, #Hamilfilm. In August 2020, Diana the Musical, a new Broadway musical which was still in previews at the time of the shutdown, revealed that the show would be filmed live without an audience and released on Netflix. Press around the announcement described it as a taping, filmed version, specially filmed version, recorded without an audience, and recording. It was announced in February that Come From Away, the Broadway musical that tells the real-life story of the Canadian town of Gander which hosted 7000 stranded passengers after the terrorist attacks of 9/11, will be filmed in May. A variety of terms were used to describe the soon-to-be-released product: filmed live or live filming, filmed live version, live stage recording, filmed stage production, pro-shot, capture, and live taping. To add to the confusion, one reporter stated that it was unclear if this filmed live version would be different from the film adaptation that had been previously announced. When we delve deeper into the filmed live theatre world, there are differences that are important to define so audiences and industry folks alike know what they’re dealing with. Some productions are filmed and broadcast live, such as most content from Live from Lincoln Center, BroadwayHD captures of She Loves Me and Daddy Long Legs, or the National Theatre’s Follies. These productions are often made available after the live broadcast, and billed as “live”. Other productions are filmed live with an audience, and edited with close-ups and on-stage angles that are filmed separately from the actual performance, such as Love Never Dies, Newsies, and Hamilton. Then there is another category of shows that are filmed to look like their stage show versions, but are filmed without an audience, such as the National Theatre’s 1998 production of Oklahoma! or the 1999 made-for-VHS Cats. While the pandemic has resulted in a slew of filmed live musicals being made available online, often live recordings made for archival purposes, it has also opened up new categories, and ways of filming that are not always made clear to audiences what they’re watching. There’s filmed live in a theatre without an audience present, such as Fiver, Sorcerer’s Apprentice, or The Last Five Years all filmed at Southwark Playhouse, filmed live remotely on Zoom such as Curveball Creative’s Who’s Your Baghdaddy, or filmed separately and edited together like Irish Rep’s clever Meet Me In St Louis. Finally, there’s a new self-titled theatre/film hybrid of stage shows filmed in theatres and presented as films, such as Curve Theatre’s Sunset Boulevard. So what should we call filmed live theatre? It’s one of my favorite questions to ask guests on the Filmed Live Musicals podcast. Take a listen to Episode 15 The Grinning Man with composers Marc Teitler and Tim Philips, to find out what I think is one of the best answers so far!
This week on the Filmed Live Musicals podcast, host Luisa Lyons chats with New York-based Australian director Benita de Wit.
We chat about creating pertinent work with college students during a pandemic, the LIU Post Sondheim cabaret One More Thing Not to Think About, what makes a good theatre capture, what makes theatre “live” and human, why a student production of Kiss Me, Kate stuck in Benita’s memory, the upcoming stream Alter/Ego and how Bowie is relevant to Gen Z, and what it means to theatricalize pop music. Benita de Wit is a New York-based Australian director of theatre and performance. They are the Associate Director for the international tour of “Bat Out of Hell” and have an MFA in Directing from Columbia University. Recent credits include “One More Thing Not To Think About” (Post Theatre Company), “The Laramie Project” (Pace University), “Slaughterhouse” by Anchuli Felicia King (Belvoir, 25A), “The Silence” (MIT, Associate Director), "The Moors" (Off Broadway, Assistant Director), "The Rape of The Sabine Women by Grace B Matthias". Benita is an Adjunct Professor at Pace University and an Associate Member of SDC. Learn more at www.benitadewit.com. Show Links One More Thing Not to Think About https://vimeo.com/jstudiosny/review/486420579/14dffcb021 Password: N3wSw!*LIU2020 The Laramie Project https://performingarts.pace.edu/current-season Alter/Ego https://www.facebook.com/liuposttheatrecompany/
Filmed Live Musicals is the most comprehensive online searchable database for musicals that have been filmed live on stage. Visit www.filmedlivemusicals.com to learn more. Follow us on Facebook and Twitter. You can also support the site at Patreon. Patrons get early access to content, no matter how much you pledge.
This week on the podcast, host Luisa Lyons chats with Marc Teitler and Tim Phillips, the composers of the smash-hit British musical The Grinning Man.
Filmed live at the Bristol Old Vic in 2016, The Grinning Man is a dark and visceral musical based on Victor Hugo's The Man Who Laughed. Topics include the development of the musical, Marc and Tim's initial resistance to releasing the archival footage, how the musical came to be filmed with motion capture, and more! The Grinning Man is currently available to stream on demand from the Bristol Old Vic. More tickets and info here. Follow Marc Teitler on Twitter, and Tim Phillips on Twitter. Available wherever you listen to podcasts! If you like what you hear, make sure to like and subscribe, and leave us a review! UPDATE: The podcast may take a couple of days to appear in Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and Overcast due to an attack on Buzzsprout's servers. Want to find out what musicals are streaming this weekend? Sign up to the free Filmed Live Musicals newsletter and receive weekly updates on upcoming streams! Want more content?! Become a Patron! You can join for as little as $3 a month, and no matter how much you pledge, you'll receive early access to the podcast and content on the site!
Thank you to patrons Rachel Esteban, Mercedes Esteban-Lyons, James Lane, Al Monaco, David Negrin, Jesse Rabinowitz & Brenda Goodman, David & Katherine Rabinowitz, and Bec Twist, for financially supporting Filmed Live Musicals.
While some of us are spending the pandemic baking bread, binging Netflix, and staring into the void afraid and half-hopeful that this will now be life as we know it, folks across the world are jumping online to make art, and specifically, musicals. The rapid turnaround of these musicals and, more importantly, their immense popularity, is leading folks in the theatre community to wonder if virtual development is the future of musical theatre making. The most prominent musical flavoring much of the discussion is Ratatouille The Musical, the world’s first musical “created entirely over TikTok.” Based on the 2007 Disney animation about a Parisian rat who loves to cook, the musical had a very short gestation period. It began life in October 2020, when a TikTok user Emily Jacobsen posted a love ballad for Remy the Rat that went viral. In December 2020 Seaview Productions (who got a shoutout in the December newsletter for their promising new partnership with Sony Productions) negotiated with Disney to put on a virtual production of Ratatouille the Musical as a benefit for the Actors Fund. Ratatouille the Musical aired on January 1st, 2021, and was only available to stream for 3 days, followed by a one-off encore screening a week later. The cast featured the talents of Wayne Brady, Tituss Burgess, Kevin Chamberlin, André de Shields, Andrew Barth Feldman, Adam Lambert, Priscilla Lopez, Ashley Park, and Mary Testa, under the direction of Six writer and director Lucy Moss. The music was recorded by the recently formed The Broadway Sinfonietta, an all-female identifying, majority women of color orchestral collective. The event was viewed by over 200,000 people, and raised $2million, the most successful fundraiser in Actors Fund history. While yet to be performed on a physical stage, Ratatouille the Musical already has a huge global following, was put together in a month, and for a budget of $200,000. When you think of the years, and millions of dollars, it normally takes to mount a Broadway show, it’s no wonder theatre folks are excited. Director Lucy Moss has stated “I hope it opens the doors and/or eyes of producers and the gatekeepers to democratize theater even further, and to show them that something of real merit can be created not in the “traditional” way.” Writing for Forbes, Lee Seymour believes virtual productions could help bolster Broadway’s return — “crowdsourced projects could provide a solution, or at least an augmentation, especially to cultivate younger fans.” A new in-the-works musical starting to generate some heat is Bridgerton the Musical, based on the recently released original Netflix series, Bridgerton. Composed by Abigail Barlow and Emily Bear, early songs have gone viral, with “Burn For You” reaching over 4.5 million views. The hashtag #BridgertonTheMusical has attracted over 2.5million views. Receiving some attention from Netflix itself, Barlow has claimed “…the gatekeepers that be are kind of no longer in power. The people have the power, and that’s an exciting thing.” Another new created-virtually musical, or series of musicals, garnering attention is Averno. Created by 21-year-old Morgan Smith, Averno is “is a transmedia universe — think the Marvel universe, but with musicals (and comics and novels and more) about witches.” Through collaboration with a diverse group of young artists, Averno has created “13 musicals, 4 novels, a TV Show, a podcast, a concept album, a webcomic musical, virtual reality, and more.” The universe exists across various websites and social media platforms including TikTok, Instagram, Spotify, and YouTube. Broadway Records, one of theatre’s leading record labels, recently released three Averno musicals as concept albums — “Over and Out,” “Willow,” and “Bittersummer.” What do you think? Will Ratatouille be served up on Broadway? Could Bridgerton The Musical sit alongside Bridgerton on Netflix? Will the Averno universe come to rival that of Marvel? Sources
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This week on the podcast host Luisa Lyons chats with Eliza Jackson, an Australian producer based in the UK whom The Stage recently listed as one of the Top 100 Theatre Makers of 2020.
Topics including making the switch from acting to producing, the joys and challenges of producing virtual theatre content during the pandemic, paying artists during lockdown, the future of streaming, what it means to make theatre during this time, and Lambert Jackson Productions streams of The Last Five Years, Songs for A New World, [title of show], and the upcoming I Love You, You're Perfect, Now Change. Australian born Eliza Jackson trained in Musical Theatre at the prestigious NIDA (National Institute of Dramatic Art) in Sydney. She moved to London in 2012 and since then, has worked in the theatre industry both on and off stage. In 2018, Lambert Jackson Productions was born and their first project was to take Eliza’s one-woman show to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. The show, The Voice Behind the Stars received 5-star reviews across the board and was then toured around Australia with much success. On her return, she took on the role of Creative Director of Lambert Jackson full time. I Love You, You're Perfect, Now Change will stream at select times between January 28-30, 2021. More info and tickets available from the London Coliseum. Available wherever you listen to podcasts! If you like what you hear, subscribe and leave a review! |
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