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While plenty of Broadway icons showed up at The Festival over the weekend in Kingston, New York, there were also performances from people and works you may not know — at least not yet!
During Saturday’s jam-packed lineup of programming, seven new musicals gave theater fans a taste of their show during an almost two-hour set on the Broadway Direct mainstage. Some of them are from writers who are early on in their careers, while others are by theatermakers who have already been on Broadway.
If you missed the exclusive preview of the seven new and original works, BroadwayWorld has you covered with a full breakdown and recap of what these musicals are and where they’re headed.
Bludline: A Hip-Hop Odyssey
By Fermin Suero, Jr. and Pete White
Fermin Suero, Jr. and Pete White’s Bludline: A Hip-Hop Odyssey was the first of the seven new musicals to kick things off at The Festival. “This show has not been produced yet,” White told those in attendance. “In fact, we haven’t even had a full reading, so you are some of the very first people to hear this.”
Seemingly influenced by Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton, Bludline uses hip-hop and rap to tell the story of Odysseus’ epic journey. “We started writing a story based more on Fermin’s life experiences, but we got to this point where we wanted more stakes,” White explained. “We wanted more of an arc, and The Odyssey was a story I was familiar with. And this was before we knew about the Christopher Nolan movie.”
While both writers admitted that it was “perfect timing” considering the popularity of the new film starring Matt Damon, Suero explained that White read Homer’s ancient Greek epic poem “in Latin when he was a teenager,” so the connection to the classic was always there.
What’s Next? Suero and White revealed that they’re taking Bludline: A Hip-Hop Odyssey to the National Alliance for Musical Theatre’s (NAMT) Festival of New Musicals in October. “We’re going to be performing a set there,” said White. “We also have an EP of songs that just came out just a few weeks ago. It’s available for streaming everywhere. It’s called Bludline: The Mix Tape.”
Betty Who is writing a musical, and those at The Festival were the first to hear it. Based on Rachel Roasek’s LGBTQ+ young adult novel of the same name, Love Somebody follows a high school love triangle involving a girl, her ex-boyfriend and the girl they both fall for.
“I’m going to play a couple songs, but [I’m] still very much in the process of writing the music,” Who told those at The Festival as she offered up a selection of tunes by herself at the piano.
“I love to tell queer stories,” Who, who identifies as a member of the LGBTQ+ community, said. “I know there are a lot of high school love stories out there, but I know there are fewer queer high school love stories and thought I can write the heck out of that.”
When it comes to Who’s writing process, she explained, “I think I’m experimenting a lot right now, which is what you’re supposed to do. Some songs, I feel are really narrative — I’m telling you a story — and other ones are kind of like ones I wanted to be able to pull right out of the show and put on a playlist.” She compared the latter to the types of songs Sara Bareilles wrote for Waitress, like “Soft Place to Land.”
What’s Next? Who said that the creative team is trying to finish more of the material by “the end of the year and maybe get some actors on it and hear it for the first time.” The songwriter explained that Love Somebody is in its early stages, so when it comes to the type of artists she’d love to see embody the characters, she said, “I won’t limit ourselves.”
Autopilot
By Lexi Weakley
Lexi Weakley wrote the book, music and lyrics for Autopilot, an original musical inspired by her family’s true story. As Weakley described to Festival-goers, “Autopilot follows Betty, whose inner turbulence is too much to navigate until she finds the strength to confront her emotions and chart any course. On her first flight as a stewardess for TWA, Betty is immediately smitten by the handsome pilot Don.”
With Autopilot, Weakley — who feels like her music sounds like a mix of Benj Pasek and Justin Paul, Stephen Schwartz and Jason Robert Brown — said she “felt deeply compelled to share my family’s saga about the need to face turbulence head on.”
“I hope that audiences will feel inspired to take control of their own plane without staying on autopilot,” she added.
What’s Next? “We are in the midst of looking for lead producers,” Weakley said directly to the crowd at The Festival. “If any lead producers are out there, please come find me.” Weakley revealed that Autopilot just recently added director Matt DiCarlo, the associate director of Moulin Rouge! The Musical, and the creative team is “looking for theaters and places to get this up on its feet.” When it comes to the ultimate goal for the project, she said, “I feel like there’s no limits. I think this could literally have any destination. I’m really excited to see where it could go.”
Star Machine
By the Temple family (brothers Gideon and Hank Temple alongside their parents, John and Hollee Temple)
American Idol meets musical theatre in the original show Star Machine, written by brothers Gideon and Hank Temple alongside their parents, John and Hollee Temple. “My brother and I wrote music and lyrics, but we all built the story together,” Gideon explained at The Festival, adding that the foursome storyboarded the project as a family.
“Star Machine follows two sisters trying to make it in L.A. when they land on a TV talent show, and the show tests whether their relationship can survive it,” he added.
Conceived around 2018 and drafted during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, Star Machine — which is set in 2002 and features a pop-infused score — was workshopped at Baldwin Wallace University. An EP of songs featuring some of the college cast members was released ahead of their performance at The Festival.
What’s Next? “We’re so excited to bring it to its next destination,” said Gideon. “We’ll have a regional premiere next summer. We can’t say where yet, but people on social media can stay up to date on all things Star Machine.”
Regency Girls
Written by Gabrielle Allan and Jennifer Crittenden
Music by Curtis Moore
Lyrics by Amanda Green
Schmigadoon!’s Isabelle McCalla and Mean Girls’ Krystina Alabado were on hand at The Festival to represent Regency Girls, which features a book by Gabrielle Allan and Jennifer Crittenden with music by Curtis Moore and lyrics by Amanda Green.
The musical made its world premiere at San Diego’s The Old Globe directed and choreographed by Josh Rhodes, and it seems that there has been a lot of buzz about the musical transferring to Broadway.
“Now, what is Regency Girls you might ask?” McCalla said to the crowd. “Well, my character, Elinor Benton, finds herself in quite a predicament. She is pregnant, unmarried and living in 19th-century England. What’s a girl to do except go along with her ride-or-dies to London to meet the one woman that might change her fate? It is a female-led caper comedy. Think Bridesmaids meets Bridgerton. It’s very funny, and it’s actually about something like health and rights.”
What’s Next? Regency Girls — which also starred Kate Rockwell and Ryann Redmond at The Old Globe — had its world premiere last year (read the reviews here), and BroadwayWorld previously reported that invited workshop presentations of the new musical were held at New42 Studios this February. When the afternoon’s host, Frank DiLella, asked if Broadway was “the next chapter,” Alabado and McCalla played coy. “Do you want to see it go to Broadway?” DiLella asked, to which they replied: “Yes!”
Jocelyn Mackenzie and Jeremy Lloyd-Styles’ indie-rock musical previously under the title Rutka gave Festival attendees a preview of the project, now named Someday Soon. “This musical is about the true account of a young girl named Rutka Laskier who was 14, writing during one of the most horrible times in human history: 1943 in Bedzin, Poland,” explained Lloyd-Styles ahead of a performance of a song about “the anger of youth when adults have failed them.”
Similar to The Diary of Anne Frank, Rutka left behind a notebook in which she recorded her thoughts, fears, hopes and dreams before she died in Auschwitz in 1943.
Someday Soon (then Rutka) had its world premiere at Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park in 2024, and the creative team also completed a residency at the Rhinebeck Writer’s Retreat where they further developed the work. Tony Award-nominated director Marcia Milgrom Dodge has joined the creative team.
What’s Next? “Oh, wouldn’t you like to know?” Mackenzie said jokingly. “Well, secretly, we may have a new production in the fall of 2027.” Though the writers couldn’t share details as to where or when, they confirmed that an announcement would come soon and encouraged fans to follow along on social media. “We’re very excited,” they said.
Huzzah!
By Nell Benjamin and Laurence O’Keefe
Closing out this new musical showcase at The Festival was Huzzah! by Nell Benjamin and Laurence O’Keefe — who theater fans may know from their hit screen-to-stage adaptation Legally Blonde: The Musical.
“Huzzah! takes place in a Renaissance fair, which is a place where Americans go to put on fake British accents and live in a world of imagined mystery, finesse, tights and turkey legs,” it was described at The Festival. “This fair is a joyously shambolic place founded by a guy named Johnny Mirandola, an ancient hippie who had two daughters. Kate is an impulsive romantic like her father, but Gwen is a type-A problem-solver.”
Only time will tell if things play out fair or foul at the Faire. Liisi LaFontaine, Michelle Lauto and Roe Hartrampf were among the performers to offer up songs from Huzzah! at The Festival, including exciting tunes titled “The World We Live In,” “Dragons” and “Howl at the Moon.”
What’s Next? It seems there are high hopes for Huzzah!, which had a successful world-premiere engagement at The Old Globe in San Diego under the direction of Lortel Award winner Annie Tippe. Produced by No Guarantees Productions, the musical had a stacked cast including Kate Shindle and more. Fans of the musical, which is already gaining a big social media following, will have to wait and see!
Photo Credit: Michaelah Reynolds
