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ABOUT US Okay, can we be honest? Rodgers and Hammerstein are DEAD, for god's sake! Their last show was FIFTY years ago (and it wasn't even that good)! Can we please move on...? After all, as British director Peter Hall says, "What attracts audiences finally is new questions, not old answers." New Line Theatre, "The Bad Boy of Musical Theatre," was created in 1991 to involve the people of the St. Louis region in the creation and exploration of provocative, alternative, politically and socially relevant works of musical theatre – daring, muscular, intelligent theatre about politics, race, violence, drugs, sexuality, religion, art, obscenity, the media, and other contemporary issues. And a lot of four-letter words. And every now and then, a little nudity. And lots of rock and roll.
And did we mention the four-letter words?
These are not your grandparents' musicals. New Line produces world premieres like Johnny Appleweed, She's Hideous, Love Kills, In the Blood, Attempting the Absurd, and The AmberKlavier; brilliant, lesser known Broadway and off Broadway shows like Bat Boy, High Fidelity, A New Brain, The Robber Bridegroom, Floyd Collins, and The Nervous Set; absurdist musicals like Reefer Madness, Urinetown, The Rocky Horror Show, The Cradle Will Rock, and Anyone Can Whistle; abstract musicals like Hair, Assassins, Jacques Brel, and Songs for a New World; concept musicals like Chicago, Sunday in the Park with George, and Cabaret; and radical reinterpretations of more mainstream works, like Man of La Mancha, Jesus Christ Superstar, Grease, Pippin, Sweeney Todd, and Into the Woods.
► Check out New Line's past shows and possible future shows. And read artistic director Scott Miller's essay on musical theatre from his book Strike Up the Band: A New History of Musical Theatre.
We could just produce commercial hits all the time, like Nunsense or Beauty and the Beast, but you can get that elsewhere. We don't ask you what shows you want to see because we think our job is to surprise you, to bring you a new adventure every time you walk into our theatre. We agree with the fictional artistic director on Slings and Arrows: "The theatre is an empty box and it is our job to fill it with fury and ecstasy and revolution."
Mike Isaacson of The Riverfront Times calls New Line's work “a wild, bold ride.” Steve Callahan of KDHX-FM calls New Line's work “challenging, refreshing musical theatre that you simply can’t see anywhere else.” Mark Bretz of The Ladue News says, “New Line Theatre is all about presentations that are daring, different or deliciously skewering the conventional.” Anne Earney says in Playback St. Louis, “Whether you’re laughing, thinking, or baffled when you leave, New Line shows are not easily forgettable.” Joe Pollack of KWMU-FM says, “When it comes to challenging St. Louis theater audiences, to stretching them, exposing them to new stimuli, hardly anyone is in a class with New Line Theatre.”
SONGS FOR A NEW WORLD
Way back in 1962, Broadway composer Jerry Bock (Fiddler on the Roof, Fiorello!, She Loves Me) predicted something which is only now finally happening: “Shortly it will happen. The American musical will shed its present polished state and become an untidy, adventurous something else. Shortly it will exchange its current neatness and professional grooming for a less manicured appearance, for a more peculiar profile. It will swell beyond or shrink from the finesse that regulates it now. It will poke around. It will hunt for. It will wander and wonder. It will try and trip. But at least it will be moving again, off the treadmill, out of the safety zone, crossing not at the green, but in between...
"The new musical may not take place between 41st and 54th street east or west of Broadway. That is, not at first. It may start in San Francisco or Chicago or Minneapolis. Or Lincoln Center. It may come from London or Paris or Rome or Johannesburg. Or the Village. It will probably be viewed and noted with greater interest. We will be less provincial about protecting the American-Broadway-musical-image. We will eliminate the high tariff against vigorous ideas not coming from The Street. We will join the common market of the theatrical world. Our eyes will stray, our ears will sharpen. And what we see and hear from everywhere will prepare us, will help us make our own new statement. Broadway may become one of many alternatives. It may, along with the musical, change its spots. And we may desert it now and then in search of something else. It won’t mesmerize as much. Nor will it strangle. Its monopoly days are numbered. Nothing more exciting in the theatre will happen than this new musical.”
In addition to our work onstage, New Line also serves our community in so many other ways, including the administration of the original St. Louis Theatre Discussion Group (created by New Line in 1999, with over 750 local members); the creation of the first two St. Louis Theatre Racial Diversity Symposiums; the creation of the St. Louis Political Theatre Festival; New Line Theatre's intern program; New Line's Cultural Partners program; and the co-founding of the St. Louis Professional Theatre Cooperative. New Line also makes available free seats to every mainstage performance, open to any college student with a valid student ID. The company recently created a web portal just for college students, The New Line College Commons. The New Liners are fully committed not just to producing quality theatre, but also to serving St. Louis metro area audiences through our work.
WEB 2.0 New Line continues to embrace new technologies and cultural trends, and we've made a real commitment to exploring the possibilities of Web 2.0, the new generation of websites designed specifically for interaction. We want to enhance the theatre-going experience for our audiences, but also to extend that experience beyond the physical theatre, so that our audiences can interact with the artists who make the shows. So we're creating blogs and viral videos for each show and we maintain an active presence on Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, YouTube, Wikipedia, and other platforms. New Line also provides incredible resources on our own full-service website, including research materials about shows we produce; background and analysis essays about shows (both on our website and in the lobby during performances); research materials on musical theatre as an art form; the promotion of other local theatre companies through comprehensive lists of St. Louis theatres and upcoming local musicals, and much, much more. See everything on our site by visiting our Site Map.
The artists of New Line honor our past and the Rodgers and Hammerstein school of musical theatre but believe that after more than sixty years of that model, it's time to move forward and explore new models and new paths. So, while working entirely within the musical theatre genre, New Line explores and experiments with audience expectations, the relationship between actor and audience, the uses of physical space, the uses of music, and the distortion or rejection of traditional linear storytelling, plot, and structure.
The musical theatre is one of our very few indigenous American art forms, one of America's greatest gifts to the world, full of the raw power of the American experience, and New Line treats it with the seriousness, respect, humor, and joy that it deserves.
Click here to read even more about New Line's philosophy, its models, its process, its goals... |
