MAINSTREET MUSICALS
Our Mission
MAINSTREET MUSICALS Inc.. – (non-profit, tax-exempt) is a national consortium of theater professionals and their non-profit, commercial, and educational partners. Through programs initially developed by National Music Theater Network (NMTN), and thanks to the generosity of professional directors and educators, MainStreet is able to provide valuable professional script evaluation services for writers and composers. Also, utilizing a variety of performance programs, MainStreet promotes development opportunities for original stage musicals throughout regional America.
Origins
By Tim Jerome, founding president
Professionally, I might be described as a “working actor.” Tim’s bio For most of the first half of 1982, while temporarily without paying work in the theatre, I had been donating enormous amounts of time and creative energy doing readings, backers’ auditions, and workshops of new musicals (and a play or two). I was working for nothing (actually for “reimbursement of expenses”) but, like my fellow artists, I considered these efforts and most of the shows themselves, to be worthy projects. Sadly, our collective attempts to get these new shows into some production track were unsuccessful.
In those days, at the end of Broadway’s Golden Era, the country was in the midst of a “downturn.” The American economy was discouraging risk. And with active producers in short supply, creators got very little help. The unions and colleges provided a few artist services. But organizations focusing on the development of new musicals were few and far between.
Though, as a “working actor,” I knew the truth: that there were plenty of good new musicals floating around, and the major papers, typically uninformed, were screaming that THERE WEREN’T ANY NEW ONES BEING WRITTEN. That did not help the situation.
Hardest hit during this period were the actors and the writers. For every worthy new show that doesn’t get produced, as many as 15 or more actors are deprived of work. Creators (composers, lyricists and book writers), whose efforts to complete a successful collaboration may take a year or more, suffer the most in that economic environment. In the early 1980s, it was a matter of some concern that many of our best creators were turning away from live theatre toward work in the commercial media — a great loss and potential disaster for the art form.
It was a very frustrating time. Of the dozen new musicals that I had worked on during that 12-month period, some (though not all) really deserved to be produced for paying customers. Actors have a pretty good sense about these things.
Then, one evening during the summer of 1982, alone in my house, reflecting on a recent discussion I’d had with two theatre friends (Sheldon Harnick – legendary lyricist – and Paulette Haupt – Artistic Director of the O’Neill Theatre Center – one of the few musical theatre development programs that existed at that time), I experienced an epiphany — a marvelous vision that excited me greatly.
What occurred to me on that hot summer night was that the plight of writers, and, by extension, the rest of the theatre community, might be relieved by the insertion of two additional interlocking programs into the professional development process: one to provide writers with constructive, comprehensive feedback (evaluation) from professional directors, and the other to publicly showcase – in the inexpensive “staged reading” format – the most worthy candidates from each annual crop of new works submitted for evaluation.
I thought: if I can construct this program, it might produce significant benefits for the industry and, ultimately, the culture. In spite of what I realized were enormous obstacles, I resolved to make it happen. Looking back, that evening changed my life significantly in every way.
These ideas evolved into the two original core programs of the National Music Theater Network, Inc. (NMTN), the 501c3 that I founded with two partners, Maggie Harrer and Jeffrey Kittay, in October of 1983.
One other crucial element shaped NMTN’s goals and programs. Outside of New York were, and are, hundreds of potentially suitable development opportunities that, at the time, were not AT ALL active in that area. Since New York-based producers, dazed by the recession, were not willing nor able to take risks, I built into the company’s mission the intention to somehow alert the regional theatre community about the identity and availability of these superior shows.