After a 20-year run, Tony-winning composer-lyricist Maury Yeston will relinquish his position as the head of the BMI Lehman Engel Musical Theatre Workshop, the three-year artistic development program for up-and-coming librettists, composers, and lyricists.
In addition, BMI announced several new faculty appointments for the workshop. Lyricist Richard Engquist ("Little Ham," "Kuni-Leml"), of late the moderator of the second-year composer-lyricist workshop, will now serve in Yeston's stead as moderator for the third-year advanced class. Composer-lyricist Carol Hall will take over moderator duties for the second-year composer-lyricist class, and writing partners Patrick Cook and Frederick Freyer will remain as co-moderators of the first-year composer-lyricist class. Nancy Golladay also remains the head of the librettists workshop.
Yeston's announcement comes at a moment when a plethora of his projects, both old and new, are all in various stages of tuning up. The most immediate of these is the Roundabout Theatre Company's revival of "Nine," which opens April 10 at the Eugene O'Neill Theatre. Projects further down the road include a musical version of the film "Death Takes a Holiday" (with a book by Yeston's "Titanic" collaborator, Peter Stone), and a new stage version of Frank Loesser's "Hans Christian Andersen," with Yeston re-arranging the score and penning a new script.
Back Stage, via email, asked Yeston to reflect on his time as the head of the BMI workshop, and the notably loquacious composer-lyricist replied by quoting the avant-garde composer Ned Rorem, who is "reputed to have said in his diaries that artists exult in their own self-discovery, but teachers exult in the self-discovery of others."
He went on to say that his "greatest accomplishment as head of the BMI workshop over the past 20 years has been to shepherd the astonishing list of brilliant writers who have passed before my desk during that time—and to encourage the extraordinary work they have produced, and for which they alone deserve 100% of the credit and glory." That list includes everyone from today's best creative teams—such as Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty, and Jeanine Tesori and Brian Crawley—to today's jacks-of-all-trades, such as Andrew Lippa and Michael John LaChiusa.
Yeston added that while the structure of the BMI workshop is not likely to undergo an overhaul after his departure, "of course the workshop will change, now that I have stepped down, and this is one of the reasons I decided to withdraw as head of the program. Twenty years is long enough for any one person to sit in an influential position like that. It is essential that other points of view be represented and aired in that forum."
He did, however, allow that there is one accomplishment yet to be achieved, and since he will continue working with the workshop in an advisory capacity, he expressed hope it might still come to fruition. "What the workshop can, and may well be able to do," he said, "is to restore the very public and quite wonderful yearly showcase. In the past, [workshop founder] Lehman Engel used to stage a selection of the very best work written during the year, usually in a theatre. All the exciting new young actors in town used to participate—I remember Betty Buckley and Beth Fowler appeared in BMI showcases when they were at the beginning of their careers."
Last year, in a Back Stage interview on the occasion of the 40th anniversary of the workshop's founding, Yeston also discussed what potential applicants to the workshop ought to do to be selected. "It's not the quality of the work that gets submitted," he said at the time, "so much as what the potential first-year student wants to work on. I think what they're interested in writing about and what they think are good ideas are terribly important. We look to see if there's a spark of a new voice. And even if their work is imperfect, that's how it's supposed to be—you're supposed to get up in the workshop and play things that aren't quite right. We want to know if there's an active musical imagination there—one that is self-sustaining and looks like it's ready to take risks. We're drawn to anybody who has a strong, definite point of view."
Applications for the BMI Lehman Engel Musical Theatre Librettists Workshop are now being accepted. The deadline for submissions is May 1, 2003. Applicants are asked to submit samples of their scriptwriting work, as well as a resume and completed application form. As for the composers and lyricists workshop, the deadline is August 1, 2003. Those applicants must submit three songs—an up-tempo, ballad, and comedy song—on a CD or tape, along with an introductory set-up and a lyric sheet. All applications may be obtained by contacting Jean Banks, Senior Director, Musical Theatre, BMI, 320 West 57th St., New York, NY 10019. Or call (212) 830-2508, or email musicaltheatre@bmi.com.