Seattle’s 5th Avenue Theatre and Issaquah’s Village Theatre are among nine companies nationwide to receive grants from the National Alliance for Musical Theatre’s National Fund for New Musicals. The funding program supports NAMT member not-for-profit theatres in their collaborations with writers to create, develop and produce new musicals.
The 5th Avenue Theatre received a National Fund grant of $4,000 to support a workshop or reading for Beautiful Poison by Brendan Milburn, Duane Poole and Valeria Vigoda with support from The ASCAP Foundation Irving Caesar Fund. Milburn and Vigoda, whose new musical Ernest Shackleton Loves Me recently premiered at Seattle’s Balagan Theatre, are both alumni from NAMT’s 2004 Festival for Striking 12 and 2012 Festival for Sleeping Beauty Wakes. Milburn is also an alumnus from NAMT’s 2011 Festival for Watt?!?,
Village Theatre received the same grant for Jesus in My Bedroom by Melanie Burgess, Tim Symons and Tony and Pulitzer-winner Brian Yorkey (Next to Normal). Yorkey is also a Festival alumnus writer for his musical Making Tracks presented in NAMT’s Festival in 2001.
This is the sixth year of grants awarded from the National Fund of New Musicals, a fund created by NAMT to help support every stage of development for new musicals. To date, the Fund has now awarded 66 grants totaling $269,500.