A Unconventional Conception in the Stage Musical

Early History

The Ten-Minute Musicals Project was born out of a one-shot effort made by Joseph Papp and the New York Shakespeare Festival/Public Theater in the late 1980s. Mr Papp, his resident director Wilford Leach and choreographer Graciela Daniele recognized the success of Actors Theater of Louisville’s annual ten-minute play competition in enticing writers to take a stab at creating works for the stage, and wondered if new musical theater creators couldn’t also be incubated through a similar such call for short musicals. They were seeking to create full-length shows, however—the short was presumably to be either a pilot or a demonstration of what might be accomplished in a longer effort. The National Endowment for the Arts shot them a quick $25,000 to finance the notion (adjusted for inflation, a whopping $72,000 today), and a perhaps understandably somewhat ill-organized first-time-out search was initiated. Around 65 submissions were received.

Reportedly, the only piece submitted to the NYSF which they felt strong enough to warrant any further work was a ‘seventeen-minute, five-character cabaret piece’ called The Mystery of Edwin Drood, by Rupert Holmes. As anyone familiar with American musical theater history knows, this did indeed become a very successful full-length Broadway show. But everything else submitted simply started to gather dust in the Public Theater’s literary department; they really had no idea what to do with any of it, and so the rather visionary enterprise effectively atrophied.

Serious Interest from the Other Coast

Meanwhile, working in West Hollywood and San Francisco, director Michael Koppy was intrigued by the intrinsic merits of the form—both as obvious trial balloons but also, more provocatively, as potential bricks in a musical theater wall, so-to-speak. He produced and directed stage musicals, as well as television, concerts and other events. One of those other shows he presented, in San Francisco, Sacramento and Los Angeles, were multiple SRO screenings of the year’s Clio Award winning television commercials. And while 99.9% percent of all television commercials are absolute crap, of course, on all levels, the best work in the medium—when carried via ‘dramatic vignette’ or ‘comedic vignette’—can on rare encounter be quite charged and compelling, whether one is willing to admit that or not. And in those unusual top-of-the-line creative efforts, economy and efficiency are achieved to such degree that whole experiences, indeed whole stories, can be conveyed in just thirty or sixty seconds—still having room for the requisite mundane product shot at the end.

Does not the stage musical also allow for such elegance and economy?

And, of course, the answer is yes. After all, and in fact of necessity, characterizations in musical theater—like those in short stories, most comedies, or half-hour radio or teleplays—already tend to be less faceted than those found in full-length straight dramas. Even music videos can—as with the rare commercial or video skit—at least on oddball occasion deliver an immediately satisfying superficial, if largely implied, narrative. Indeed, the digital age—and the pace and sophistication of contemporary life in general—have enabled us all to share in a ‘dramatic shorthand’ that wasn’t ubiquitously available to previous generations.

Yet, a perhaps even more fundamental inquiry leads to matters of how might a curated set of individually exceptional works be weaved together, dramaturgically consolidated, toward building a cohesive literary complex beyond the obvious ‘handful of shorts’, or ‘evening of blackouts’—to creating a significant, musically expansive and dramatically integrated entirety.

The Annual Competition Begins

Working in loose affiliation and coordination with the Public Theater, Mr Koppy created The Ten-Minute Musicals Project, announcing an open call for submissions which was publicized throughout the English-speaking world. Over 150 works were received in that first round—two and a half times what the $25k NEA funded call had brought to the NYSF. Along with many new works, this included just about everything that had been previously submitted to the New York Shakespeare Festival, which had retained no rights in the material. By then the Public Theater was in severe disarray, Mr Leach having died and Mr Papp in his last months as well; and so it was decided Mr Koppy would continue without the then-stumbling Public.

First-Ever Coefficient Short Musicals Workshop

To ‘plant the flag’, Mr. Koppy directed a one-month workshop production in San Francisco of six of the works submitted. Using non-Equity, university, and community theater performers, the workshop was nonetheless opened to the public and the press, and audience discussions followed each performance, to establish whether the nascent idea of an evening of encompassed complete individual short musicals merited further exploration. The reception could not have been more welcoming and enthusiastic.

While individual critics and audience members debated and compared likes and dislikes among the individual pieces presented, the overwhelming majority agreed the enveloping ‘larger context evening’ itself truly worked, even in this very rough and sketchy, sometimes stop-start framework. What was needed, as Koppy had recognized going in, was deep dramaturgical attention to sculpting and shaping the disparate elements into a seamless, interlocking whole; and preliminary appliances to that end proved consistently effective, if understandably uneven at this trial-and-error early developmental stage.

Work Continues

Subsequent workshops in Nashville, New York, and Miami further developed the first ‘product’ of The Ten-Minute Musicals Project, a full-length show comprised of 12 complete short musicals (called “segments”, or sometimes “chapters”, in deference to the integrity of the whole) retaining the makeshift title given the effort in the first workshop, Stories 1.0. Via the continuing annual international competition sponsored by The Ten-Minute Musicals Project, intriguing new works of creative musical theater arrive and are investigated each year. Occasional informed suggestions from musical theater, musical film and television musical historians and critics also helps to ferret out lost, long-forgotten efforts that may fit into the project. As of October, 2024, twenty works have been selected for inclusion and development in the program.