Original Works for Amateur Musical Societies
Sun, 4 Jan 2009, 03:56 pmmarkknezevic1 post in thread
Original Works for Amateur Musical Societies
Sun, 4 Jan 2009, 03:56 pmHi everyone,
I'm looking for a bit of advice, but first let me say I have read the faq.
My experience is primarily as a jazz musician and I play in a couple of groups around Sydney regularly. That said I also have a bit of experience in theatre, mainly acting, and I'm always looking to cultivate that experience further.
Most amateur musical societies I know tend to put on plays that everyone knows, stuff by Shakespeare or Wodehouse. That's great because I love the stuff, but I'm wondering are there any societies out there that workshop new works or ever actively look for original submissions? I'd like to try my hand at it, at least get into a workshop phase of things. I know there is at least one - Ryde Argyle Performing Arts (RAPA) - but this is fairly infrequent. Every other amateur musical society in Sydney, afaik, puts on tried and true stuff.
I saw in the faq there is always the possibility of 'going it alone', and producing my own musical. While it may come to this, I'd prefer to work with an established society.
Any tips or contacts? I suppose one way would be to sign up to a writing course at, say, WAAPA or NAIDA, but that would defeat the purpose of being amateurish in my opinion! I suppose there are playwright competitions out there, and I've found a few, but again, I'd like to know if there are any amateur societies that put on new works. All the ones I've found linked off this site put on the usual stuff.
Cheers,
Mark