National Youth Music Theatre and The Other Palace are have announced the NYMT’s 2019 summer season, which continues the NYMT’s annual residency at The Other Palace for a third consecutive year and demonstrates their shared commitment to provide exceptional opportunities for young people in musical theatre.
Jeremy Walker, producer of NYMT, said, “For over 40 years NYMT has shown unrivalled commitment to the provision of opportunity in the field of musical theatre, both for young people as participants and for writers and composers. We’re delighted to carry that work forwards in partnership with The Other Palace. Our shared aim is to extend our programme for the benefit of young people of all backgrounds and to encourage emerging writers, providing opportunities for them to work on a large scale alongside our experienced dramaturgs and directors and, of course, with an outstanding young company of actors and musicians.”
Chris Harper, Director of Programming at The Other Palace, said, “The award-winning National Youth Music Theatre represents the very best in work with young people in musical theatre and, from its more recent beginnings, The Other Palace has encouraged and showcased brand new musical theatre writing, nurturing up and coming writing and composing talent. Together the two organisations share an enviable reputation for new musical theatre and for excellence. I’m delighted they are here again this summer and look forward to future summer seasons at The Other Palace.”
NYMT was founded in 1976 by Jeremy James Taylor with its first production, The Ballad of Salomon Pavey, winning the Scotsman Fringe First Award at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. Since then NYMT has gone on to produce over 200 musicals and concerts and worked with thousands of young performers and theatre makers from across the UK.
Recent alumni include Amara Okereke (Stage Debut Award) playing Cosette in Les Misérables and 19-year-old Joe Griffiths Brown, who recently joined the cast of Hamilton as swing. Amongst the many who started out at NYMT are Jude Law, Idris Elba, Sheridan Smith and Michael Jibson, who dedicated his 2018 Olivier Award for Best Supporting Actor in a Musical (King George III in Hamilton) to NYMT, Drew McOnie (Olivier Award-winning choreographer of In the Heights and director-choreographer of King Kong on Broadway) and Allison Ava Brown, currently playing Angelica Schuyler in Hamilton.
NYMT’s annual residency at London’s The Other Palace will always feature contrasting works. The 2019 season comprises three outstanding musicals including this year’s commission from the award-winning writing partnership of writer/actor, Scott Gilmour, and composer/musical director, Claire McKenzie aka Noisemaker. Legend Trippers uses the lens of a group of mismatched school kids who all share a love of the supernatural to explore themes of social and political division, shining a light on how we treat “outsiders”.
Amid religious intolerance, political injustice and racial tension, the stirring Tony Award-winning Parade explores the endurance of love and hope against all the odds. With a book by acclaimed playwright Alfred Uhry and a rousing, colourful and haunting score by Jason Robert Brown, Parade tells the tragic, true story of the trial and lynching of a man wrongly accused of murder.
The third of NYMT’s productions at The Other Palace is the classic Cole Porter musical, Anything Goes. Music, dance, laughs, and the age-old tale of Boy Meets Girl – Anything Goes is a hilarious shipboard romp, wrapped around one of Cole Porter’s most magical scores.
In addition to the summer season at The Other Palace, NYMT takes the show on the road with Growl – The True Story of the Big Bad Wolf by Timothy Knapman and Laurence Mark Wythe. Following a hugely successful summer workshop, NYMT takes Growl on a mini-tour to Theatre Royal Bury St Edmunds, Curve Leicester and Rose Theatre Kingston.
Continuing their series of workshops of new musicals in development, NYMT invited submissions from emerging writers with a view to taking their work forward to full production at The Other Palace. The first such award has been announced and a fully cast workshop of a new musical by Katie Lam and Alex Parker will be directed by Kate Golledge in residence at Sevenoaks School this summer. Previous work by Katie and Alex includes The Railway Children and AmDram, which was recently workshopped at The Other Palace. This latest in a long line of NYMT commissions will form part of their 2020 season of productions.
For further information about NYMT’s auditions, workshops, residential courses and productions, please visit www.nymt.org.uk
