Interview: Alex Jackson on MAKING A MUSICAL: THE FUTURE OF BRITISH MUSICAL THEATRE Live!
Photo credit: Charles Flint
Making a Musical: The Future of British Musical Theatre podcast is a unique deep-dive into the creative processes of writing a new musical, curated and hosted by director Alex Jackson and The Other Palace Programme Manager, Kiki Stevenson. We caught up with Alex ahead of their upcoming live show at London Podcast Festival on 11 September.
What inspired you to create the podcast?
Making a Musical: The Future of British Musical Theatre is an evolution of All That Scratch which was a live new musical scratch night that we recorded in The Other Palace Studio pre-pandemic and released as a podcast. We created the new version to demystify the process of making new musicals.
As the industry emerged from the fallout of the pandemic, we recognised a gap in the market for helping people who might be writing a new musical to find out more about the nitty-gritty of the process behind the writing. It’s what friend of the podcast (and music and lyric writer of hit new musicals 42 Balloons, Babies and Hot Mess) Jack Godfrey dubbed “Let’s get geeky with Alex and Kiki” in Season 4, Episode 4.
If you’re starting out in Screenwriting and even Playwriting, there are vast educational resources and support schemes for new writers starting out, but that is less the case with new musicals. This is partly because of the increased number of disciplines involved (book, music and lyrics) and because there is no one way to write a musical. So we wanted to help change that and give writers a chance, in their own words, to describe their writing process. From Excel grids, to post-it notes and writing via video call, our guests reveal all their behind-the-scenes methods.
I grew up in rural Devon where being interested in the latest new musicals often felt quite isolating, at a time when much of the development of musicals was happening in London. It’s much better nowadays with more new musicals debuting across the UK, but the podcast allows us to bring the behind-the-scenes reality of making new British musicals to audiences nationwide and internationally.
What do you think about the current state of new musical development in the UK?
The UK could be at the beginning of a really exciting period in the development of new musicals. Global success stories like Six and more recently Operation Mincemeat have sparked an interest in British musicals from international markets and re-invigorated the touring circuit here in the UK.
There has been an increase of new British musicals making their way to the West End which demonstrates that the industry - and audiences - recognise the craft of writing new musicals from homegrown creatives rather than relying on American imports. We love to see shows like Two Strangers Carry a Cake Across New York, Kathy and Stella Solve a Murder!, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, I Wish You Well, to name a few, finding success on the bigger stages!
This demonstrable interest from audiences in buying tickets to new musicals by relatively unknown writers is crucial to the future of British musical theatre. It evidences the long-term sustainability that new musicals can bring to producers and venues’ programmes. Investing in new shows carries the opportunity for future royalty payments from productions, and licensing. So it makes sense commercially, but it also provides audience development opportunities which nourishes ticket sales across a venue’s whole season.
There’s great work being done by festivals like BEAM which showcases new musicals organised by the brilliant folks at Mercury Musical Developments and Musical Theatre Network. Musical Bites at The Other Palace offers lunchtime previews of early material from new musicals. MT Fest stages readings of new musicals in development featuring headline cast and creative talent. There’s exciting work coming out of the schemes at the new musical theatre department at Birmingham Hippodrome, and The Lowry in Manchester continues to support new musicals. NYMT and BYMT are both regularly developing new musicals. The list goes on - many of these initiatives are relatively recent developments and demonstrate the strength of the future musical pipeline.
Revivals will always have a place in the landscape, but if producers and venues continue to invest more heavily in the development of new musicals, the increase in revenue streams for venues and producers, not to mention employment for actors, creatives and crew plus the economic benefits for restaurants and hospitality surrounding venues, are all huge upsides.
Have you developed an instinct for when a show you feature on the podcast will become a big hit?
We feature new British musicals at different stages in development, so some shows are naturally earlier in the development process and figuring out how to take the next steps to production. Others are much closer to productions being launched. For example, the team behind Becoming Nancy, which had its UK premiere at Birmingham Rep last year, were doing rewrites prior to rehearsals for that production when they recorded their episode of Making a Musical.
The Olivier Award winning The Curious Case of Benjamin Button recorded their episode (Season 4, Episode 4) following their successful run at Southwark Playhouse. In fact, I remember the day we recorded the episode they were due to have their first viewing at the Ambassadors, which later became their West End home.
When the team behind In Clay joined us (Season 4, Episode 10), they had just done a one-off fundraising concert, and had a run at Upstairs at the Gatehouse planned, later announcing productions in America and recently in China.
Thinking back to our first ever episode of the previous iteration of the podcast, it featured two early numbers from 42 Balloons, and that was way back in 2019. Our co-host Kiki Stevenson, also the Programme Manager at The Other Palace, immediately knew there was something here and supported writer Jack Godfrey with in-kind space to get Act 1 and then later Act 2 on its feet for the first time before it was picked up by Global Musicals. The show has since sold-out several concert productions, had a successful full staging in Manchester and has more recently taken Chicago by storm. Jack was back with Martha Geelan on Season 4 Episode 4 to talk about Babies, another show they’ve created together which ran in the main space at The Other Palace.
Nurturing new musicals is about providing opportunities for shows on every rung of the ladder, and matching the right show to the right opportunity. On Making a Musical, we try and provide knowledge of the process for new writers listening, as well as platforms for writers producing their work in the near future.
It is also important for us to celebrate wider success for new British musicals. A musical doesn’t have to play in the West End for it to have been a success. For us, it is as much about the process and the journey, as it is the final result (because when is a show ever truly finished!)
You're doing the first live edition of the podcast soon at the London Podcast Festival. What can audiences expect to hear? Will it be a very different experience for you than recording it in the normal manner?
Regular listeners can expect all the usual brilliant nerdy chat about the process of making musicals, plus live performances of brand new material. We’ve really exciting guests lined up for the live edition. Plus the inevitable bloopers from myself and Kiki as we are forced to present the podcast live for the first time in over five years! We’re also looking forward to taking questions from the audience and chatting all things musicals in the bar after the recording.
If you could pick one episode of your podcast for a new listener, which would it be?
Check out the Making a Musical: The Future of British Musical Theatre podcast feed, and pick a show you’ve seen recently like The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. You’ll find exclusive details all about how it got made and the hurdles the team overcame in order to bring it to the stage.
If you’re interested in a remarkable story about how the big West End producer Sonia Friedman (Mean Girls, The Book of Mormon) picked up first-time Australian writer Yve Blake’s show Fangirls during the pandemic and put on an epic production at Lyric Hammersmith, try Season 5 Episode 9: FANGIRLS.
But every episode has a different and exciting show and writing team attached, so you can’t go wrong with any of them!
To purchase tickets for London Podcast Festival , please click here.