Bring Out Your Musicals! The Yale Institute of Music Theatre is accepting submissions for 2016

It’s that time of year again. The Yale Institute of Music Theatre has announced that it’s accepting submissions from “emerging composers, book writers and lyricists” for its 2016 program.

Typically, two new full-length music theater pieces are chosen. The creators are given a residency at the Yale School of Drama, where the musicals are given intensive workshops. The workshop culminates in public readings of the projects, with audiences drawn from attendees of the International Festival of Arts & Ideas.

The writing teams of the chosen works get lodging and transportation costs covered during the residency, plus a twelve hundred buck honorarium.

The YIMT is drawing from a specific pool of applicants for this opportunity. As the press release spells out (and even underlines):

Only composers, book writers, or lyricists who are current graduate students; or who have graduated from an accredited degree-granting institution (undergraduate or graduate) within the past five years; or who are current Yale students are eligible to apply. Past Institute participants are welcome to apply, provided they still meet the program’s eligibility requirements.

Some of those “past Institute participants” have seen their works go on to full productions at theaters around the country. The Andy Warhol Factory musical mystery “Pop” was an early YIMT success, as were the operas “Invisible Cities” and “Stuck Elevator.” (The videos here are from those later productions; the YIMT readings are “staged” to a certain degree, and performed with great enthusiasm, but are generally your standard street-clothes and piano-score presentations.)

The Yale Institute for Music Theatre is headed by Mark Brokaw, a true lover and shaper of new works for the American theater. He directed the original New York production of Paula Vogel’s How I Learned to Drive. More recently, he did the Nicky Silver hit The Lyons and the Broadway revival of Cinderella. My favorite credit of his might be the John Waters musical Crybaby.

The YIMT application deadline is Jan. 8. The two workshop projects will be announced by the end of March. The residency runs June 12-26. The 2016 Arts & Ideas festival runs June 11-25, so presumably the readings will be held during the fest’s closing weekend.

To apply to the Yale Institute for Music Theatre, or to make some post-grad, pre-professional musical theater maven aware of the thing, go to drama.yale.edu/YIMT.