Day 5
The 2009 Festival featured Memory is the Mother of All Wisdom by Sara Cooper and Zach Redler. After the Festival, the show was a produced at Barrington Stage Company (a NAMT member theatre!), and with the help of a National Fund for New Musicals grant, Transport Group (another NAMT member theatre!) produced the show Off-Broadway this past year, now with the new title: The Memory Show. Though the title changed, the cast stayed the same through all of these productions.
Look below for images of Leslie Kritzer and Catherine Cox staring in this powerful piece—4 years apart!
National
Fund grants of $10,000 to support full productions have been awarded to:
Barrington Stage Company
(Pittsfield, MA) for Southern
Comfort by Dan Collins and Julianne Wick Davis. This project
previously received a Project Development Grant in support of its time at
CAP21, a Writers Residency Grant for its time at Playwrights Horizons and was
presented in NAMT's 2012 Festival of New Musicals.
Transport Group (New
York, NY) for The Memory
Show by Sara Cooper and Zachary Redler, with support from Stacey
Mindich Productions. The
Memory Show was presented in NAMT's 2009 Festival of New Musicals.
National
Fund grants between $2,500 and $5,000 to support a workshop or reading have
been awarded to:
An interview with Sara Cooper and Zach Redler, writers of The Memory Show from our 2009 Festival, about the life of the show and its upcoming Off Broadway production.
The Memory Show is a two-person comic tragedy about the troubled relationship of a woman who has just been diagnosed with Alzheimer's and her estranged daughter who moves back home to take care of her.
What has happened with The Memory Show (other than a shorter title) since the Festival in 2009?
We had a reading and then a production at Barrington Stage Company, which was an excellent experience. The Memory Show was also translated into Korean and produced in Korea this fall season. We got to go out there and see it, and it was awesome!
What was it like having the production up at Barrington and seeing the show on its feet?
We were so fortunate to have Bill [Finn] and Julie [Boyd] supporting us and believing in our work, and to have such an amazing director and MD and actors and designers. It was a really smooth process. We were so happy with how it turned out.
What has changed in the show since your NAMT Festival reading and what has changed since Barrington?We did some rewriting after NAMT, and then Joe [Calarco, director] and Vadim [Feichtner, music director] were really helpful in figuring out what to cut at Barrington. Basically, the piece has just gotten tighter.How did The Transport Group production come about?
Barrington produced a closed reading in New York, and Jack and Lori from Transport came to see it. We love them. We can't wait for the production.What is most exciting about finally having your show Off Broadway?
Because the piece is so personal, we are just really excited to share it. The piece takes place in Brooklyn and so the tone is very New Yorky. We feel like it's just coming home.
Why should people come check out The Memory Show?
It's a wonderful cast and creative team (truly!!!) and they have really brought our little two-person musical to life. We poured a lot of ourselves (and our parents, and our grandparents) into this piece, and we think it says something very truthful about parent-child relationships. We hope this is a show that is universal because it's so real to us.
For more information about The Memory Show, please visit www.transportgroup.org.
