Andrew Lloyd Webber and Paul Taylor Mills have announced details for The Other Palace Development Programme and first Work in Progress series until December 2017.
Having opened in February 2017 as a new home for musical theatre, the Other Palace aims to discover, develop and reimagine musicals. The team behind the venue want the spaces to be used to nurture the next generation of musicals, and the creatives behind them; celebrating the very best of the art form, from the established to the brand new.
Andrew Lloyd Webber said: “I want The Other Palace to become the London space where writers and producers can try out and perfect new work, offering audiences the opportunity to see and contribute to musicals in development.”
The venue’s Development Programme has been created to identify, explore, encourage and support musicals at every stage of their journey, offering creatives space, time and resources and enabling them to explore and test their work, both privately and with an audience.
For audience members, The Other Palace’s Development Programme offers the opportunity to see new shows in their infancy and be part of the process, providing the creative team with invaluable feedback. The venue has also partnered with Sli.do, a pioneering app which involves audiences in the conversation and provides an easy way to create interaction and solicit invaluable feedback, through live polls and surveys pre and post show.
The programme contains a mix of networking events, opportunities to experiment, workshops and shows to assist musical creatives who would like to bring their creative vision to life. These include Creatives Connect (Wednesday 13 September, 8.30pm), Pitch Days (Wednesday 24 May and Wednesday 11 October, 10am), Open Mic Nights (Monday 25 September, 9pm) and Musical Bites showcases (Thursday 5 October). More information can be found, and creative ideas submitted, on the venue’s website.
The Other Palace Work in Progress series offers productions a short residency at the venue which allows companies to create, develop and explore their work. These residencies will include a number of public sharings where audience feedback will be collected to inform the next stage of the project’s development. The ambition is that these productions will have a future life either at The Other Palace or beyond, with ideas to be submitted using the link above.
Tickets are now also on sale for the first Work in Progress series, which includes musicals Heathers The Musical (30 May – 3 June), Dr Feelgood (10 June), Joybubbles (17 June), Bonnie & Clyde (26 June – 1 July), and The Little Beasts (14 July – 29 July). Tickets are available through The Other Palace website.
For artistic teams that have creative visions to share, they should submit ideas to The Other Palace’s programming team, providing a short synopsis, information about the journey of the piece to date and two contrasting songs. The team will review submissions on a regular basis, shortlisting the most promising, and then guiding the creative teams into the most relevant step of the Development Programme, from Pitch Days to Works in Progress. More information about how to submit can be found on the website.