Artistic director of Turbine Theatre PAUL TAYLOR-MILLS is currently pretty busy bringing together MTFestUK, a celebration of new musical theatre which runs at the London venue before embarking on a ‘digital’ UK Tour from the 31 May to 4 July 2021.
The Festival sets out to promote quality artistry, showcasing new musicals to UK audiences with a view to elevating them to full production, and giving audiences an insight into the process of creating new work and the art of collaboration. Paul launched the inaugural MTFestUK season at The Other Palace in 2019, followed by a 2020 season in February last year.
The 2021 festival line-up includes an exciting and diverse selection of eight new musicals: Far From Heaven, #50days, The Man In the Ceiling, Millennials, HouseFire, Cake, Proud and Tony! (A Tony Blair Rock Opera).
Here Paul continues Musical Theatre Review’s interview series: Five Questions With…
What a logistical feat it must have been to plan for MT Fest UK 2021 with all that has taken place in the world during the last 12 months. And not one musical but eight! How have you managed it?!
I’m very lucky to have an extraordinary team around me that are brilliant at doing all the things I am terrible at. I think there are many different types of producers and I’m definitely led by the work and not by spreadsheets. Both types are a critical part of the process and I’m lucky to stand on the shoulders of brilliant people who love Excel! I really should go and do that course I was booked on in 2012…
How did you go about putting the programme together?
We do an open call and usually receive around 200 projects. I listen to each musical which usually takes around six weeks. The actual festival is then usually curated by a mixture of: conversations I’m having with artists, work that I feel will work at The Turbine and be supported by the vibe of our space and sometimes commissions. This is where I will put a writing team together, sometimes with a subject matter and sometimes I just tell them to use their imaginations and go wild!
The line-up of creatives and casts involved in the Festival is so impressive. I imagine the prospect of bringing all these talented people together provokes all kinds of emotions post lockdown.
It’s been an emotional year for us all. There’s a curious mixture of optimism, excitement and indeed fear. I’d be lying if I didn’t say I wasn’t frightened. This is the third time we’ve had to reschedule the festival so I’m praying that we can now all only look forwards and never go backwards. Every single theatre I’ve been in over the last year has been so safe and I think it’s important to share this message far and wide so that we can begin to build our incredible work force.
Following its debut run in Battersea the Festival goes on a digital tour. It’s an inspired idea and opens up the shows to a much wider audience. How did that idea come about?
Once I decided that the festival would be in May, there was no way I wasn’t going to let it happen. Artists needed to know that all the work they were doing over the last year was valued. I’m a fond believer in looking at the nuggets of gold that we’ve struck upon over the last years and for me this is the digital tour. I wanted to try and get audiences everywhere to understand the complexities of writing new musicals. The digital tour has also opened up conversations with theatres that have never previously been there and our work will now physically tour to some of them which is amazing!
You always fly the flag for original work and I know it is part of the ethos at the Turbine Theatre, but do you think some producers will opt for ‘safe’ commercial content as theatre reopens, having taken such a financial hit during lockdown? It would such a shame for new writers to lose out.
I think people will do whatever is right for them and right now we have to respect that. There’s an amazing amount of innovation that’s happened over the last year and I’m hoping that stays. The world is also different and we’ve all been able learn more about ourselves, our place in the world and to a certain extent, further question the work we want to make. I don’t think any theatre is ‘safe’ – it’s always been a precarious market place and I think our focus should always be about supporting those people who are making opportunities. As ultimately this will lead to more opportunities and encourage producers to be riskier, bolder and braver which can only benefit us all, audiences and artists.
www.theturbinetheatre.com/whats-on/mtfestuk-2021
For more information on the MTFestUK Digital Tour, click HERE
Bio
Paul Taylor-Mills is the artistic director of The Turbine Theatre at The Battersea Power Station, London. He has worked as advisory producer to Andrew Lloyd Webber and The Really Useful Group and is former artistic director of The Other Palace Theatre, London.
Recent credits include: At the Turbine Theatre Cinderella: The Socially Distanced Ball, Hair (part of the Turbine on the Jetty Season) Torch Song, High Fidelity and Cat In The Hat. Elsewhere, Heathers The Musical at the Theatre Royal Haymarket and The Other Palace, Murder For Two at the Watermill Theatre and The Other Palace, The Wild Party at The Other Palace, European Premiere of Disney’s Peter and the Starcatcher at the Royal & Derngate, Northampton, Side Show at Southwark Playhouse, The Last Five Years at the St. James Theatre, End of The Rainbow on UK tour, In The Heights at Kings Cross Theatre and Southwark Playhouse (winner of three Olivier Awards), Casa Valentina at Southwark Playhouse, Carrie The Musical at Southwark Playhouse and associate producer on The Importance Of Being Earnest starring David Suchet on UK tour and the Vaudeville Theatre.
SHARE THIS POST:
Comments are closed.