Birmingham Hippodrome are partnering with China Plate, Musical Theatre Network, Mercury Musical Developments and Royal & Derngate Northampton to support global majority* artists and writers develop an idea for a new and original musical, through The Musical Theatre Darkroom, a ground-breaking artistic development programme.

The Musical Theatre Darkroom aims to provide artists the space, time, and resources to experiment and challenge their creativity with the aid of experienced musical theatre practitioners to develop their idea for an original musical.

This year the Musical Theatre Darkroom are inviting artists and writing teams to apply for their weeklong residency workshop taking place in July at Royal & Derngate Northampton, with a residency planned in Birmingham for next year’s cohort. The Northampton residency will be led by composer Fred Carl and lyricist and librettist Robert Lee, both experienced musical theatre practitioners and specialist tutors from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts Graduate Musical Theatre Writing Program.

The programme is open to both individual artists and pre-existing writing teams. Artists and teams should have an existing idea for a musical or have a proposed draft. The selected teams and artists will also have the opportunity to pitch their work at the BEAM showcase for new musical theatre in Spring 2023.

Chris Sudworth, Director of Artistic Programme at Birmingham Hippodrome said: “We are delighted to be partnering with such brilliant organisations and to continue Birmingham Hippodrome’s commitment to the development of new musical theatre from a wider range of voices. We are excited to see the artists and ideas that develop through the Musical Theatre Darkroom and hope some of the work explored may one day make it onto the Hippodrome stage and those of large-scale venues across the UK.”

Applications close at 10am on Monday 21 March. To find out more about the Musical Theatre Darkroom head to the website.

*This includes people of Black Caribbean, Black African, South Asian, East Asian, Southeast Asian, Middle Eastern, Arab, Latinx, Jewish, Romany and Irish Traveller heritage.