NMI’s RESOURCE CENTER for musical theatre writers

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Welcome to the musical theatre writers’ Resource Center.

This is a FREE page hosted by New Musicals Inc.

As of September 1, 2024, we are NO LONGER maintaining a list of Producers and Theatres, or a Contests Listing. We have found we are no longer able to keep those lists properly up-to-date.

BUT we encourage you to check out the offerings from our friends at MusicalWriters.Com who have a wealth of resources for musical theatre writers!

What you can still find on this page is:

an idea library of thousands of royalty-free public domain stories and plots
a glossary of musical theatre terms (with audio/video examples)
access to short videos filled with tips and advice from NMI staff
access to critical feedback options and format guidelines from NMI

Enjoy!

FORMAT LIKE A PRO

Watch this FREE video to learn how to implement the FORMAT GUIDELINES specifically designed by New Musicals Inc. Make sure your script and score look professional and are ready to go into development.

Want more tools to help you get your formatting right?

*** VISIT OUR FORMATTING PRODUCTS PAGE ***

LIBRARY OF IDEAS (Royalty Free)

FREE ACCESS to a library of 1000+ downloadable royalty-free stories, plays, plots and other inspiring indeas we’ve found in the public domain for you. There’s a brief excerpt of every item in the library, so you can take a quick glance to see whether or not you want to read the whole text. In addition, the NMI staff has made annotations and recommendations for many of the titles in the library about their potential to become musicals. Save hundreds of hours of research and reading!

Here are some random samples from our listings of story ideas in the public domain:

The Queen’s Lace Handkerchief (by Richard Gen)
A Mother Of Monsters (by Guy de Maupassant)
The Nightside of Character (by Ambrose Bierce)
Not A Pin To Choose Between Them (by Sir George Webbe Desent)
On The River (by Guy de Maupassant)

*** LINK TO COMPLETE LIBRARY OF IDEAS ***

IMPROVE YOUR CRAFT

New Musicals Inc. offers a whole series of professional online LABS for bookwriters, lyricists, and composers who are serious about improving their craft. This video is a FREE sample of one of the lecture videos from the all new Lyric Lab 1 - Fundamentals.

*** CHECK OUT ALL THE LABS ***

FREE PROGRESSION HANDOUT

NEED SOME FEEDBACK?

Have you written a musical? Are you working on one? NMI has smart, professional, detailed dramaturges who will help you make sure you are on the strongest path to fulfilling the promise of your work. From video and audio feedback packages to one-on-one dramaturgical sessions, we have what you need to take the next step forward. We even have an annual contest that results in a workshop and concert reading in Los Angeles.

"We really did appreciate all your help - you’ve got just the right tone to critique. It’s a matter of 'A Spoonful of Sugar Helps The Medicine Go Down'!”
~~George Stiles
(Mary Poppins, Honk, Soho Cinders)

*** Check out NMI's Feedback options ***

MUSICAL THEATRE ARCHIVES

Here's a sample of items from our vault of historical photos, and musical theatre trivia about events that happened THIS month in the past:

September 23, 1987 Director/choreographer Bob Fosse died of a heart attack, leaving behind an opus of work few of his contemporaries could even begin to compare with.
September 26, 1957 The show created by one of the all-time starriest creative teams – Arthur Laurents (book), Leonard Bernstein (music), Stephen Sondheim (lyrics), Jerome Robbins (director/choreographer), and Harold Prince (producer) – West Side Story, opened on Broadway.
September 16, 1924 Lauren Bacall, star of Applause and Woman of the Year who came to the musical stage after 25 years of movie stardom, was born today.

*** Click to access the full archives. ***

INSIDER TIPS AND ADVICE

Here is one of our videos with insider tips and advice:

*** VIEW MORE INSIDER TIPS AND ADVICE VIDEOS ***

GLOSSARY OF TERMS

Here are some samples from our Glossary of definitions of musical theatre terms. We will be adding to this over time - as well as adding actual sample scores and sound recordings. Check back often!

Page numbers — paginating integrated script and score:
A screen capture of a session integrating script and score and adding running page numbers. This video demonstrates using Acrobat, but the principles of pagination would apply to any pdf integration program.
Assonance:
The repetition of vowel sounds in a passage. Hamilton is ripe with assonance. Assonance in contemporary (hip-hop) music can function similarly to internal rhymes, allowing words to resonate against each other. See, for instance, for instance at all the ten trisyllable words from “Right Hand Man” (Hamilton) which have vowels similar to “elephant” in the following:

…general
The venerated Virginian veteran whose men are all
Lining up, to put me up on a pedestal
Writin’ letters to relatives
Embellishin’ my elegance and eloquence
But the elephant is in the room
Writing the Broadway Musical:
by Aaron Frankel.
Hyphens in lyrics:
Four general principles of hyphenating lyrics: HYPHENATE: 1) Between double-letters (fun-ny). 2) Between differing consonant sounds (cen-tral, not ce-ntral). 3) Elongate vowels (che-mi-stry); 4) Make exceptions, however, for clarity (book-ing, not boo-king). Dictionaries aren’t the authority here; your ears are.

See attached for a more complete discussion and some further examples.
Song spotting:
The process of determining possibilities for sung passages.

*** Click to access the full glossary. ***

Wisner Sisters . Photographer: Bloom (Chicago, Ill.) “Wisner Sisters at the Keith-Albee Chester Theatre, week of June 9th”–Hand-written on verso. Location: The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts / Jerome Robbins Dance Division. From the collection Treasures of the American Performing Arts, 1875-1923

Come on, babe,
Why don’t we paint the town,
And all that jazz!

--Fred Ebb