Last year, Theater Latte Da announced an exciting new program called
NEXT 20/20, in which they committed to developing 20 new works of music-theater by 2020. Part of this program is their annual
New Works Festival called NEXT,
now in its 4th year. They hold workshops of three works in development and present three readings of each on three consecutive weekends. Now, when you hear the word "reading," you might think dry and dull reading from a script. But that's not what this is. Latte Da recruits some of the best music-theater talent in the Twin Cities to not just read these musicals or plays-with-music, but to really bring them to life so that the creators (and we lucky audience members) can get a glimpse of what they might become on stage. And the audience is actually an important part of the process for the creators. Each reading is followed by a brief discussion period in which audience members can give feedback to the creators that will help them continue to develop the work. It's so exciting to be part of the process of creating new original music-theater (my favorite thing)! Two previous
NEXT pieces received full productions in Latte Da's 2015-2016 season (
Lullaby and
C.), and with their new season announcement coming up soon, I'm excited to see what new music-theater we will be treated to next season!
