FESTIVAL COUNTDOWN: One Week Away

A guest blog entry from Kevin Del Aguila, writer of The Astonishing Return of...The Protagonists! to be presented at this year's Festival of New Musicals.  

It’s a week away from NAMT, I've got our 40ish-minute cut of the show ready, we've written a new song for the presentation, we've assembled an UNBELIEVABLE cast, and yet all I can do is think about the venue where the whole thing will take place: New World Stages.

New World Stages is where I go every night. Not because I love hanging out in a basement, but because that's where I'm currently performing in Peter and the Starcatcher, reprising the role of “Smee” that I originated on Broadway. Our producers recently announced that the show will be closing in mid-January, so I've felt a little nostalgic about New World recently, and started to think about how much time I've spent there.

With a style that can only be described as “airplane hanger chic,” New World Stages is the place where I first became involved with NAMT as the director of the See Rock City and Other Destinations presentations in 2008. Hey! That's not true!  I was a performer in 

FESTIVAL COUNTDOWN: On the Record

A guest blog entry from Michael Shaieb, writer of The Astonishing Return of... The Protagonists! to be presented at this year's Festival of New Musicals.  

About fifteen years ago when I graduated from the NYU Graduate Musical Theatre Writing program, I was faced with the reality of what I would do for a living. I had some recording equipment and thought that perhaps I could start a recording studio. When I met my partner, Brent Lord, who had the technical knowledge, we formed a company which later became FatLab Music. We specialized in recording demos for music theatre writers and performers.

When I began writing The Protagonists with my collaborator, Kevin del Aguila, the question was how do we record our show to convey the different stylistic choices we created for our world. The Protagonists contains a world of