Picture: Roy Tan
New musical theatre specialists Perfect Pitch has unveiled a new partnership with theatrical licensing house Broadway Licensing which will involve the commissioning, development, production and licensing of four new British musicals and the addition of seven existing Perfect Pitch titles to the Broadway Licensing catalogue.
Commenting on the new initiative, Perfect Pitch founders, Wendy and Andy Barnes said: “What is fantastic about this partnership is the wide spectrum of musicals that it reaches and the sheer number of British writers whose musicals it supports. It provides us an opportunity to share across the world many of the musicals we have developed over the years, whilst giving us access to seed funding for exciting new projects.”
Sean Cercone, CEO of Broadway Licensing, added: “We’re honoured to partner with Wendy and Andy on the slate of musicals in development and continue to find exciting opportunities for their existing titles. Broadway Licensing has been built on our team’s passion for new work, new voices and new opportunities and the company continues to grow by staying true to those core values. Developing new work internationally is just the next step on our journey.”
The new collaboration follows on from the launch in February of Rise:Up a regular monthly preview series spotlighting new British musicals and UK writing talent on Broadway Licensing’s sister site stream.theatre as part of a drive to promote new contemporary musicals to a wider audience. The first of the four musicals to benefit from the new Perfect Pitch/Broadway Licensing initiative will be 42 Balloons. Inspired by the true story of an American couple, a lawn chair and 42 weather balloons, Jack Godfrey’s sung-through musical featured in the first episode of Rise:Up.
With the three other British musicals to benefit from the new partnership to be announced at a later date, the seven Perfect Pitch titles added to the Broadway Licensing catalogue are: Craig Adams and Ian Watson’s LIFT; Aaron Lee Lambert’s From Up Here; The House of Mirrors by Eamonn O’Dwyer and Robert Gilbert; The 45th Marvellous Annual Chatterley Village Fête by Susannah Pearse and Rebecca Applin; The Lost Christmas by Laurence Mark Wythe; Danni Hero also by Wythe and Timothy Knapman; and Dougal Irvine’s In Touch.
Paying tribute to the support the company has received in its mission to develop new British musicals, Andy Barnes said: “As a non-profit company we are continually grateful to Arts Council England for their ongoing support of our work and this partnership demonstrates a really positive collaboration between the commercial and subsidised sectors. This partnership will help support the work of around 20 British writers whose musicals will now be available around the world, and support four shows through development, to production development, to production and even beyond that. And as our patron, Stephen Fry, noted, ‘I think we sometimes forget just how extraordinarily good we are at writing musicals in this country’.”.
Perfect Pitch was established in 2006 and is the not-for-profit sister company of the pair’s Global Musicals (co-producers of Six).
Angela Thomas
SHARE THIS POST:
Comments are closed.