The 16th Annual Goodspeed Festival of New Musicals will be presented March 18-20 at the Goodspeed campus in Connecticut. The three-day festival of new work returns to Goodspeed after its cancellation in 2021 due to COVID-19.
This year’s Festival showcases new musicals all penned by women, kicking off March 18 with a staged reading of A House Without Windows, featuring a book by Anna Ziegler and music and lyrics by Anna K. Jacobs. March 19 will be highlighted by a staged reading of the darkly comic musical HoT, which has music by Lynne Shankel and words by Sara Cooper. The Gunfighter Meets His Match, with a book, music, and lyrics by Abby Payne, will be presented March 20.
The Festival also includes seminars, symposium, and cabarets.
Preparations begin March 7 when the three teams of writers and composers arrive at Goodspeed to continue working on these developing musicals. They will be joined by musical theatre students from The Hartt School, who take part in rehearsals and continued development of the material.
“We are proud to welcome this amazing group of female-identifying writers to the Goodspeed campus and to share their important and entertaining stories with our audiences at this earliest stage of development. They, along with the other prominent artists and industry experts who will participate in the symposium, seminars, and cabarets, will make this one of the most significant and memorable events in Festival history,” says Goodspeed Artistic Director Donna Lynn Hilton. “The Festival of New Musicals is the cornerstone of Goodspeed’s new works development program and we invite all who enjoy musical theatre to join us for a weekend that will enlighten, entertain, and educate all who attend.”
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