GUDS FAVORITTMUSIKAL x2
And QUERIDO EVAN waving through a window
Good afternoon (or morning) world!
Welcome to the latest edition of the Broadway DNA newsletter! In pulling the latest international musical theatre IP headlines, I focus on illuminating post-premiere lifecycles for what commercial theatre creators value: what titles are successful, where, by who, and why? Some of the how, the nuts and bolts of licensing and producing, I dip into in asides mixed in with the news. Natalie-isms, if you will. Whether you're a producer, artist, or simply a musical theatre enthusiast interested in how IP grows global, this bulletin is your ticket to staying informed and getting globally inspired!
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“The Book of Mormon” to Premiere in New Second Norwegian Translation
The nine-time Tony Award-winning 2011 musical will premiere at Folketeateret in September 2025 in a new Bokmål translation.
The show first premiered in Norway in 2017 at Det Norske Teateret in the Nynorsk variety of Norwegian. This new production features a new translation by Artistic Director Atle Halstensen into Bokmål, the most widely used form of Norwegian. The dialects mostly vary in written form but are similar in speech.
SPANISH-SPEAKING WORLD
“QUERIDO EVAN (Dear Evan Hansen)” returns for a second season at Buenos Aires’ Maipo Theater, a casting competition fuels new interest— In February, producer Pablo del Campo held a special performance competition to find a new Evan and Zoe for the Argentine remount of the 2023 production directed by Sebastián Irigo that began new performances in January. Selected out of over 1,000 submissions, winners Valentín Zaninelli and Guadalupe Devoto were formally incorporated into the company that same night and will perform during the month of March.
Did You Know?
Many markets are structured so that Commercial Production Companies remount a production every few seasons, as opposed to the Broadway/Western model of aiming for open-ended runs or new production revivals. This creates opportunities to build and cycle through new funding and fanbases, as well as synergizing cast return availability, title & company synonymity, and potentially lucrative licensing royalties over long periods of time.
The Stage Company Argentina’s “Come From Away” expands to Spain via the opening of sister company The Stage Company España— After a successful 2022 run at Maipo Theater in Buenos Aires, The Stage Company’s production of “Come From Away” directed and produced by Carla Calabrese with an adaptation by the same director and Marcelo Kotliar returns May 24 for eight weeks before heading to Madrid’s Teatro Marquina in September 2024 for an open-ended run.
For more info on Madrid’s booming theatre scene, check out these stats from fellow international theatre Substack Jacques.
EUROPE
First look at the Czech premiere of Sondheim’s “Company” from DJKT Theater
First video look at the City Theatre of Reykjavík’s European premiere of “Jagged Little Pill”
German premiere of “Doctor Dolittle” earns middling reviews — Director Markus Olzinger leads the Leslie Bricusse musical in its German premiere in Annaberg-Buchholz at the ETO - Erzgebirgische Theater. The not oft-produced musical made its world premiere in London in 1998, followed by UK and US tours.
Cast set for the German outdoor premiere of “Mamma Mia!” at the Tecklenburg Open Air Games— Separate from the recently closed, 2022 first Hamburg remount in twenty years from Stage Entertainment, this outdoor premiere may be most similar to the recent open air production in Mörbisch (Austria) - a great success with over 100,000 spectators at 30 performances. The Tecklenburg production will run for 28 performances between June and September.
ASIA-PACIFIC
Kreative Musical “Mia Familia” returns for new season— Originally produced by Korea’s MJStarfish in 2013, the musical about New York vaudeville actors (and the mafia) during the Great Depression, since taken over by Hong Company, sold out every day over three seasons in 2019, 2020, and 2022. A live capture available for purchase (for about $66 USD) was made possible by the Performing Arts Creation Center of the Korea Arts Council. A Chinese licensed production by Focustage opened in Shanghai’s “Vertical Broadway” (the 21-story Asia Building, home to 22 100-seat theaters) followed by a touring expansion of the show’s footprint into Guangzhou, Changsha, and Chengdu, China all over the course of late 2020. The work is written by Heejun Lee and Hyun-sook Park.
Did You Know?
The Korean market differentiates between Licensed works and original works called Creative musicals (창작 뮤지컬). The term refers to a show made in Korea by a Korean production team using Korean capital, where a Korean company holds the intellectual property rights (Even if foreign composers, writers, or directors participate, if it is produced with domestic capital, it is still classified as a Creative musical.) While the colloquial “K-musical” is a faster recognition device commandeered by Western readership, my proposed English portmanteau “Kreative Musical” honors the market’s linguistic and artistic intentions.
Dream Theater, a musical theatre presenter in Busan, South Korea announced their 2024 subscription package— Including “The School of Rock” international tour (first return since 2019), the second stop of the Korean premiere of “Dear Evan Hansen” after a Seoul run, and the highly anticipated return of the 2021 season’s Korean production of“Hadestown” also after a run in Seoul.
Original musical joint project between Japan and the UK set for 2025— The full version of the musical “The Illusionist” will be performed at the Nissay Theater in Tokyo March 2025 and at the Umeda Arts Theater Main Hall in Osaka in April 2025. Scheduled to have its world premiere in Japan in 2021, COVID led to a concert version being performed instead (which you may recall from this New York Times article). The musical, written by Peter Duchan and Scottish composer Michael Bruce and directed by Thom Southerland (Lennon/McCartney’s “She Loves You” in Denmark), is based on a short story by Stephen Millhauser and the 2006 film.
We’ve just returned from seeing Virginia’s Signature Theatre’s “Private Jones,” a gripping, inspiring and unexpectedly funny world premiere musical adventure about a deaf Welsh sniper in World War I. The show is trilingual (English, American Sign Language, and British Sign Language) and features hearing, Deaf, and hard-of-hearing actors. More information here, running through March 10.
Molière le spectacle musical
The brainchild of famed French-Tunisian musical producer Dove Attia (“The Ten Commandments,” anime musical “JoJo's Bizarre Adventure”), the “l’opéra urbaine” premiered at the Dôme de Paris from November to February and is now on tour in France, Belgium, and Switzerland.
Contextually, the French musical theatre genre developed, not from text-emphasized performance practices, but from sung-through operetta to today’s rock operas, wherein the songs are the dominant aesthetic, dictating the performance. The tension between mise en scène design and score is the signature of the French spectacles musicaux, seen in elements like dance corps and rockstar headsets.
Anyway, this curtain call has been stuck in my head for months.
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