KATY LIPSON is the director of Aria Entertainment, a company which has been at the forefront of reimagining how theatre can operate given our current world of lockdowns and social distancing. Her Park Theatre production of Rags (originally at Manchester’s Hope Mill Theatre) and Southwark Playhouse production of The Last Five Years have been nominated for six Off-West End Awards each, and her work has been recognised in this year’s The Stage 100.
In the second half of this two-part interview Katy discusses her passion for musical theatre and nurturing new writing with Musical Theatre Review contributor Ian Bowkett.
You are well known for championing new theatre and looking for new writers and composers. Is that because you first got involved with the world of theatre by writing and producing your own show on a fringe scale?
I did, yes! I think my passion for music and theatre started as soon as I was born, and I didn’t really know what my calling was. I loved being in shows, watching shows, and playing the piano. I didn’t really start writing when I was young, but I really loved improvising and taking a score and making it sound bigger. Ultimately, through a few different paths, producing was the thing that really connected with me. I always knew that musical theatre would be the focus, because that was the thing that spoke to me most. I love plays, don’t get me wrong – and I am more drawn to plays as I’m getting more life experience – but I am always going to have a musical theatre focus.
I find it easier to focus on one genre because it means that you can be better connected with what’s going on, and I don’t like to think that I’m missing out on anything. I have to be available to go to every reading I’m invited to. That’s why we’ve brought on a literary manager last year, someone who could help me in going to see shows and giving feedback so we can find the next generation of talent and nurture them into the next big names.
Rags. Picture: Pamela Raith
Is this the From Page to Stage scheme?
Exactly. We used to do a live festival for six years where we would showcase nine shows for a season every year. That was a big undertaking. I realised as I got older, let’s not just put nine shows on because we have nine shows, let’s only put on a festival when we have the work that’s really worth showcasing. So, we took more time looking at work, and now for two years we’ve just been assessing work all the time. We’ve probably had three to 400 shows over the last two years sent to us. Not the whole show, just a couple of scenes, a couple of songs. A few of them get through from my literary manager to me, and I might say I want more material, or I might say I like this writer, this show needs a bit of work, let’s support this, or let’s option this or let’s produce it.
There are so many new writers working on shows at the moment, now they finally have more time to do compose and write. Currently, it’s very tricky to mount a workshop or even get together with some friends and read it through. Do you have any advice for creatives who have just written a new piece?
Well, if they’ve written something that they were writing anyway when Covid hit then you’ve got the same challenges as you had before, if not more, because you’re trying to get engagement. As always, someone is going to back it if they see potential in it. There might be more opportunities for funding at this moment in time because the Arts Council have got more money available, so think about the themes of your show and whether there’s an argument for it getting some funding. And research! Using your time being stuck at home to find out what could be the right building, who could be the right producer, could I attach a director, and could I get my own reading together just on Zoom with some friends, just to see it out loud.
I think there’s lots of things you can think about, but it’s always tricky to take the next step. As a new writer you’re not always in control when that next step might happen, but you can do a lot for yourself before someone else might come to help. Same as a producer really, you’re on your own until you start getting some backing, and then you’re always looking for more backing and more actors and more creatives, and more theatres to want to programme your show. It’s the same. People think producers are more in control because they make choices and decisions, but there’s still a lot of doors to get through.
[Subsequent to our interview, Katy Lipson has teamed up with Adam Lenson’s ALP Musicals to launch their Chamber Musical Project. They put out a call for pitches for brand new, smaller-scale shows, one or more of which will eventually be developed by Lipson and Lenson.]
Hair. Picture: Roy Tan
I read a recent interview in which you said you choose to produce different musicals for different reasons: some you might choose for passion, or some you might choose to get good reviews or make more money. Can you give any examples of the reasoning behind choosing to develop certain shows?
Everything I’ve done for a long time has been on a smaller scale: boutique musical theatre. None of those shows I’ve ever chosen because I thought I could make really good money from them. You know you’re not going to do that. So really, the majority of my shows – from The Mystery of Edwin Drood to Rags to Parade to Hair, Little Women, Yank, Pippin – they were all for love, they were all passion projects. Shows to cement my reputation so I could continue to build a profile and people would talk about and invest in the company.
Choosing something like The Addams Family was purely strategic because it is a good show that I thought could be commercial. I also thought it would be a great first show to take me to the next level as a producer now that I can raise more money after doing shows like Pippin. It has introduced me to the world of making bigger money, which made me think: “wow, how do I get something completely unknown to sustain a run like The Addams Family has done?” That’s the real question that everybody wants to answer, but I’m hugely committed to having that as my main objective.
Actually, as I get older and need more out of my time, you do make different decisions, you do have to say no to some shows that really speak to your heart because you feel they might not go anywhere else: they’re too progressive, or they’re too avant-garde, or the route’s too difficult in England. I had to turn down a show that I put in my festival called XY which was like Fun Home meets… I don’t know, something like a Sondheim piece. It was contemporary and zeitgeisty and different, but I didn’t know what I could do with it. It was an American musical so why would a regional venue here want to back it?
But that show got picked up at the National Alliance for Musical Theatre Festival in New York, where Come from Away started. Suddenly there were lots of American producers thinking it was brilliant. The USA is a big country, and they have such a strong network for developing new musicals. They have a much better trajectory for something like XY than here.
The inverse must be tricky too, when you have an established musical that you love. It must be quite daunting putting your own spin on it, trying to get a five star review out of a show a reviewer might have seen many times before.
I’m not so concerned about how to do the show differently, because I tend to choose shows that haven’t been done for a long time. That’s how I built up a reputation. I did Parade in Manchester because it had been done in London twice already. Hair had never really been done on the fringe, certainly not in Manchester. Yank was a premiere. Pippin was a northern premiere. Little Women was a European premiere. Aspects of Love hadn’t been seen in an intimate way outside of the Menier Chocolate Factory, so that was unique. Doing The Last Five Years now – yes, I did put a spin on it with the pianos, that was an idea I had for a while – and Rags was a completely new show that Stephen Schwartz knew I was passionate about for many years and we’d stayed in touch over. I am proud of the collection of shows I’ve done.
Last year, you managed to reopen The Last Five Years relatively quickly with a smaller audience separated by Perspex screens in a venue adapted for social distancing. It has been very successful, but it does seem that putting on a socially distanced production requires a level of budget that might not be available to smaller fringe shows, which is the entry level for most new writing. How do you see this lockdown affecting the future of new musical theatre?
The Addams Family. Picture: Matt Martin
Well, for me [the budget] wasn’t available either. I got no grant, I got no funding, nothing. So sadly, we just had to reinvest the money that we got back from the last show and hope for the best. We saved a little bit because we had a set, we had costumes, and we only had to do two weeks’ rehearsal. But even running it for this length and then shutting early we won’t have made back the money that we put in twice over the run. We won’t have got back that original amount of money from March. So that’s sad, but it is some money back to the investors. C-O-N-T-A-C-T, again, it is a unique budget. You have to be smart. You can’t be throwing money away, so you need to figure it out.
If you’re at an earlier stage like when I started, I would probably have done something small in a socially distanced Tristan Bates Theatre with 30 seats. If you’re at that stage in your career and you’re going to do a box office split, go for it. Find that one or two-person scratch show that you’re going to do for a week and do a crowd-funder, look at the Arts Council, try to raise a little bit of investment.
If you’re at my level where you’re transitioning into the world of commercial producing, you’re going to have to think harder. Some people would sit back and wait until they can do things in the way that they are used to. Others will come across scripts that they want to do and get involved in recordings or getting a theatre with a star and doing a concert. You’ve just got to educate yourself, have conversations, and never take no for an answer. Just keep fighting.
It is harder probably for new musicals to get off the ground for a little bit because we’re backlogged anyway with product, and people are going to be more maybe mindful of risk. Not me necessarily, I think that it’s more exciting to do something new. I’m not going to do a 25-piece new musical, but I might do a two-hander or one-hander progressive spoken word piece, you know? I do think there’s a great future still to play for and this is a blip. We will get through it and you’ve got to stay positive and make things happen. You can only do that by doing, rather than waiting.
The first instalment of Musical Theatre Review’s interview with KATY LIPSON is available HERE.
SHARE THIS POST:
Comments are closed.