Manhattan Theatre Club (MTC) has announced a new partnership to commission new musicals. In collaboration with the Hermitage Artist Retreat in Sarasota County, Florida, MTC will develop new work by offering fellowships to musical-writing teams.
The inaugural cohort consists of Lindsey Ferrentino and Samuel Beam, and Sofya Levitsky-Weitz and Benjamin Velez. “The Fear of 13” scribe and “Queen of Versailles” book writer Ferrentino will pen a libretto, and Beam, also known by the stage name Iron & Wine, will compose original music for “The Orange Grove,” a Florida-set, modern retelling of Anton Chekhov’s “The Cherry Orchard.” As part of their fellowship, Ferrentino and Beam recently presented a free program on the Hermitage Beach in Florida, with Ferrentino sharing excerpts from her original scene featuring local actors who had performed in a Sarasota, Florida production of her play “Ugly Lies the Bone,” with Beam performing a concert of five songs.
Levitsky-Weitz, a writer for stage and television including FX’s “The Bear,” will pen the book for “It’s All Relative.” The new musical will follow the life of Albert Einstein and his first wife and collaborator, Mileva Marić, herself a mathematician and physicist. Velez, who was nominated for a Tony Award for the score of “Real Women Have Curves,” will contribute the music and lyrics. Levitsky-Weitz and Velez’s fellowship program is scheduled for a later date.
“I’m thrilled to commission these two brand-new musicals,” said MTC artistic director Nicki Hunter in a statement. “One of my hopes for MTC’s future is that we can build upon our rich legacy as a home for new plays by also developing exciting world-premiere musicals. I’m particularly looking forward to embarking on that journey with this group of talented artists and to continuing to expand our roster of musical theater voices in years to come.”
“We are excited to be launching this collaboration with Manhattan Theatre Club,” added Hermitage artistic director and CEO Andy Sandberg. “We are proud to be an incubator for new works across all artistic disciplines, with many notable musicals being developed right here on Manasota Key. As our friends at MTC deepen their commitment to commissioning new musicals, this partnership provides a meaningful development step on this journey for some of the leading composers, lyricists and librettists of our time.”
Each artist will receive a developmental residency at the Hermitage Artist Retreat, which provides residency opportunities to artists across disciplines, along with free artistic programming to its local Englewood, Florida community. New work will be commissioned in partnership with MTC, a nonprofit which produces new plays and musicals at Broadway’s Samuel J. Friedman Theatre and two Off-Broadway venues. MTC has been home to more than 600 premieres, including almost 20 percent of the new plays on Broadway since 2003 when it opened the Friedman (first called the Biltmore).
