In February 2019, Paul Taylor-Mills launched the inaugural MTFestUK season which ran at The Other Palace. A celebration of new musical theatre from around the world, MTFestUK is back in February 2020, this time at the new and vibrant Turbine Theatre on the banks of the Thames in Battersea.
MTFestUK will be a central part of the 2019-2020 season at the Turbine, which has already been exciting critics and audiences alike with Drew McOnie’s acclaimed production of Harvey Fierstein’s Torch Song, and the current production of High Fidelity, a musical adaptation of Nick Hornby’s bestselling novel, directed and choreographed by Tom Jackson Greaves.
Paul Taylor-Mills, Artistic Director, Turbine Theatre said “We are so thrilled with how the inaugural MTFestUK went, and so excited to be bringing it back for next year, bigger and bolder than ever!
Out of the eight musicals presented earlier this year, at our first festival, five are now in further development or moving towards full scale productions and we are really keen to extend the reach of the musicals we work on and the storytellers who make them. We can’t wait to see what submissions we get back for MTFestUK 2020!”
MTFestUK revels in the diversity of stories on stage and the people who make the work. It sets out to promote quality artistry with a view to showcasing and elevating projects to full production, giving audiences an insight into the process of creating new work and into the art of collaboration.
The festival will promote the best of new British work and at the same time forge overseas partnerships and find new ways to share processes and artists.
MTFestUK is for both industry professionals and the theatre going public, with an ambition to run the festival every February in the UK and, in time, extend the festival to further territories beyond the UK.
At the centre of the festival is a Taster Menu series of new musicals, each presented as a semi-staged production. Alongside the Taster Menu, the festival will also feature a selection of talks, performances and one-off events including:
Tea For Two – A programme of intimate and afternoon conversations. Paul Taylor-Mills, Artistic Director of the Turbine Theatre, will be in discussion with some of the industry’s most celebrated musical theatre practitioners.
Night Caps – An informal late-night concert series getting to know some of the country’s eminent musical theatre stars through the songs that shaped them, songs they might never get to sing and songs from new works.
For full details and more information about submitting a musical, go to: www.TheTurbineTheatre.com
