Winter Park Playhouse has prided itself on bringing the best in small, intimate musical theater to Central Florida for more than 15 years. Last year, the playhouse launched a brand new musical festival to help bring light to some up-and-coming musicals from across the country, and after a wildly popular opening, it’s back. Winter Park Playhouse will host six developmental musicals looking to expand its audience in the second annual Florida Festival of New Musicals Aug. 23-26.
Roy Alan, the founder of Winter Park Playhouse and the Florida Festival of New Musicals, wanted to give new shows the platform to be seen by other theater directors across Florida and the rest of the United States. Alan was looking for an opportunity to showcase more light-hearted, smaller shows that would fit the stage of the Winter Park Playhouse while also giving them the chance to be seen in front of an audience that otherwise may not have had that opportunity.
The Florida Festival of New Musicals is a four-day event that will showcase the six brand new, never-before-produced musical works and will bring together writers and composers with patrons, press, producers and directors. The first act of each selected musical will be fully read and sung concert-style, without staging, by varying casts of professional actors and musicians.
Alan says that festivals like these take place all over the world, but none in this area before Winter Park Playhouse stepped up last year. “There were no other shows [like this] in the southeast United States, so I said, why not [here],” he says.
After the success of last year’s inaugural festival, the team at Winter Park Playhouse wasted no time in getting this year’s festival up and running. 24 musicals were submitted by playwrights and authors from all over the world, but only six were selected to be featured at the Winter Park Playhouse new musical festival.
After the six shows were selected, the directors of the Winter Park Playhouse—Alan, George Colangelo, Michael Edwards, and Ned Wilkinson—were each assigned two of the shows to work on and collaborate with the authors of the musicals. Over the course of nearly a year, the directors gained the understanding of the show in order to be able to put one act of it in front of an audience three times.
Auditions for actors and actresses took place at the end of July and in early August. Once the casts are chosen and finalized, they only have a handful of rehearsals before show time.
This year, the directors have picked six shows with an eclectic mix of styles from a love story set in the Mexican Revolution to a one-man show set in an Amtrak. The festival looks to have something for everyone, but the one musical that may catch LGBTQ fans’ eyes is “Somewhere Between,” with book, lyrics and music by Alan Becker.
Becker, an openly gay man and Washington state resident, submitted his musical to be featured in this year’s festival in Sept. 2017. He has been working on “Somewhere Between” for the better part of the last decade, he says, ironing out every kink to make the show as perfect as possible.
Becker likes to juggle a lot of different projects at once. On top of his playwriting, he is an award-winning, professional stage and film actor and director. He has performed in numerous shows in his hometown of Seattle, as well as directed several productions in his black box theater in Los Angeles.
Becker says that there were periods where he would work exclusively on writing the dialogue or work on the songs for “Somewhere Between,” but then he would put it down and step away in order to focus on other projects. He says that has been the cycle he has gone through for the last 10 years, and now he is getting to experience the benefits from his hard work. Becker submitted
“Somewhere Between” to various festivals similar to the Florida Festival for New Musicals across the world, finding success both stateside and abroad.
Recently, “Somewhere Between” was chosen as a World Finalist for a new musical festival in Munich. Becker says the festival coordinators flew him to Germany for the festival where he got to see his dream come to life, noting that the show was well received. A German theater director in attendance enjoyed the show so much that he reached out to Becker to get a European tour started right away. Currently, Becker is working with the director and a German translator to bring the show to life in German so that it can be seen by various audiences across German-speaking countries. He hopes that the premiere of his show at the Winter Park Playhouse will spark similar results.
Becker says even though “Somewhere Between” is an LGBTQ-themed show, he believes all audiences will be able to relate to the story and identify with the protagonists. In the musical, a young man from a small town comes of age 10 years late and is running out of excuses to settle down with his high school sweetheart. However, it all changes when a boy comes to town and he starts to question everything he has ever thought about love and relationships.
“The story is about finding your own trail in life as opposed to the past your loved ones want to put you on,” Becker says.
He advises that “Somewhere Between” lets the audience truly get into the characters’ lives and lets you really know the who they are, which Becker thinks sets his show apart from other musicals in the genre. “People will be surprised about the realism of people’s lives,” he says. “It’s not a musical comedy with cartoonish characters. It’s a story about real folks with messy lives and no easy answers.”
“Somewhere Between” is a two-act musical that takes a deep dive into the lives of each of the show’s characters. It features a cast of just six actors, giving Becker the opportunity to really develop them and giving the audience a chance to really get to know and understand each one’s motivations. Becker says while some other shows only offer cliché representations of LGBTQ character archetypes, “Somewhere Between” offers an authentic version of situations that LGBTQ people in society go through each and every day.
“I think it’s always best to speak from one’s own experience,” he adds.
The main character questions his sexual orientation throughout the show, adding to his internal struggle of being his true self rather than who everyone wants him to be. While the show is not entirely autobiographical, Becker says that there are elements to the story that can be traced back to his own journey or that of others in the LGBTQ community. “I think LGBT people [these days] are facing some of the greatest pressures in this society not to be themselves,” he says.
Becker’s “Somewhere Between” will be joined at the festival by “Diamond and the North Wind,” “Extended Stay,” “How to Marry a Divorced Man,” “Miss Isabella Rainsong and Her Travelling Companion” and “The Stranger from Seville.”
“Diamond and the North Wind” (New York, NY)
Book by Jeffrey Haddow | Lyrics by Jeffrey Haddow & Thomas Tierney | Music by Thomas Tierney
Aug. 23, 8 p.m.; Aug. 25, 6 p.m.; Aug. 26, 4 p.m.
“Extended Stay” (New York, NY)
Book by Jenny Stafford | Lyrics by Jenny Stafford and Scotty Arnold | Music by Scotty Arnold
Aug. 23, 2 p.m.; Aug. 24, 4 p.m.; Aug. 25, 8 p.m.
“How to Marry a Divorced Man” (New York, NY)
Book & Lyrics by Bryan D. Leys, based on the book by Leslie Fram | Music by Clare Cooper
Aug. 24, 6 p.m.; Aug. 25, 2 p.m.; Aug. 26, 12 p.m.
“Miss Isabella Rainsong and Her Traveling Companion” (Fulton, MD)
Book, Lyrics & Music by Ross D. Martin
Aug. 23, 4 p.m.; Aug. 24, 8 p.m.; Aug. 25, 12 p.m.
“Somewhere Between” (Vashon Island, WA)
Book, Lyrics & Music by Alan Becker
Aug. 24, 2 p.m.; Aug. 25 4 p.m.; Aug. 26, 6 p.m.
“The Stranger from Seville” (Melbourne, Australia)
Book & Lyrics by Victor Kazan | Music by Kevin Purcell
Aug. 23, 6 p.m.; Aug. 25, 10 a.m.; Aug. 26, 2 p.m.
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