TRU Community Gathering via Zoom - Way Way Off-Broadway: The Thriving Philadelphia Theater Scene

In the room: Charles Gilbert, composer, writer, educator and executive director of MusiCoLab; and Barbara Bellman, playwright-librettist and the president and co-founder of MusiCoLab, which has been supporting the development of musicals in Philadelphia since 2018. We'll focus on the work and programs of MusiCoLab as well as a broader view of the surprising number of professional theaters and opportunities for theater artists and indigenous homegrown works, plus LORT theater and national tours, university programs and the formidable Philly Fringe, founded in 1997, and now featuring more than 1,000 performances by national, international and Philadelphia-based artists of all disciplines. We'll catch a glimpse at the city's history as a prime out-of-town tryout stop-off on the way to Broadway and the more recent Prince (as in Hal) Music Theater which gave early-career opportunities to folks like Adam Guettel, Tina Landau, Ricky Ian Gordon, Julie Taymor and a host of others. We'll also consider how the scene has changed with the demise of the Prince, 11th Hour Theater Company and, most recently, The University of the Arts and its Polyphone Festival, and how MusiCoLab hopes to fill the void.

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