National Music Theater Foundry

The next generation of musical theater starts right here

The National Music Theater Foundry is CATG’s pinnacle new works development program dedicated to the creation of new musicals. Open to musical writers from all over the nation, the Foundry is committed to providing a full toolbox in a professional environment to help writers of the next era of American musical theater develop and expose their original stories! 

The Foundry will develop 2 new musicals in 2025 – with 2 staged reading presentations for public audiences of each piece. Writing teams will be provided a wealth of feedback from various sources, including professional panelists as well as audience members, all to assist in the development and editing process of these rich stories that need to be told!

Selected piece will receive the following:

  • Rehearsal facilities will be provided for a 2 week, in-person, rehearsal process, equipped with printers to implement live edits
  • Each piece will be assigned a professional creative team including a seasoned Director, Dramaturg, Stage Manager, Music Director, as well as a qualified Cast
  • 2 staged readings for the public in a local venue
  • Basic technical capabilities with a sound designer and lighting designer
  • 3 panelists will provide moderated critique after each presentation, along with playing a key role in the script editing process
  • Writing Team Compensation – $1500, PLUS HOUSING/TRAVEL

LOCATION: TR Studio Theatre, Theatre Raleigh Arts Center, 3027 Barrow Dr, Raleigh,NC, 27616

DATES: What We Leave Behind – January 24 at 7:30 PM, January 25 at 3:00 PM; tickets available starting December 1!

january 13 – 25, 2025
what we leave behind

 by Jenny Giering (Music) and Sean Barry(Book)

WHAT WE LEAVE BEHIND is a profound and timely musical exploring the impact of chronic illness on a family. Jenny is a composer who has made musical theatre her life’s work. When she receives a diagnosis of breast cancer, it seems as though her world has come crashing down around her. Yet her prognosis is good. Her surgery is successful. Why, then, hasn’t Jenny recovered?

By turns sensuous and heartbreaking, WHAT WE LEAVE BEHIND moves seamlessly between the glories of Jenny’s past and the struggles of her present. Before, she and her husband, Sean, shared a life of artistic collaboration and a glorious year with Anna, the beautiful third partner in their marriage. Now, Jenny is on her way to becoming someone else…But who, exactly? And what will her debilitating, mysterious illness mean for her art and her marriage?

WHAT WE LEAVE BEHIND is the musical expression of one artist’s struggle with chronic illness and how that struggle impacts her entire family. When we fall ill, we expect to recover. But what happens when that illness never ends? Are we still the person we were, or have we become the illness itself? How can an artist continue to produce art when she can barely get out of bed? And what does it mean for a husband and a son when the wife and mother they love has become someone else?

Written and composed by husband-and-wife team Jenny Giering and Sean Barry and based upon their shared journey, WHAT WE LEAVE BEHIND is a compelling one-woman show addressing some of the most pressing questions of our time with both heartwarming humor and heartwrenching honesty. 

Capital Arts Theater Guild is partnering with Theatre Raleigh to foster the development of What We Leave Behind, which includes a developmental staged reading of the show in January 2025, and culminates in a full production in Theatre Raleigh’s MainStage Season, Septemeber 24 – October 5!

Theatre Raleigh and Capital Arts Theatre Guild look forward to presenting this production to bring awareness and support on women’s health issues in our community. Stay tuned for additional information on ways to engage with this show and our community partnerships.
Visit https://theatreraleigh.com/what-we-leave-behind/ for information on Theatre Raleigh’s full production!

Jenny Giering, Composer –

Jenny Giering’s current projects include Alice Bliss (book by Karen Hartman, lyrics by Adam Gwon, directed by Mark Brokaw) commissioned by Playwrights Horizons and Stacey Mindich Productions (2018 Weston Playhouse New Musical Award, 2021 Theatreworks Silicon Valley New Works Festival), and What We Leave Behind (co-written with Sean Barry) (Aspen’s Solo Flights Festival) for which she received a 2021 Barrington Stage Spark Grant. She has written numerous incidental scores including music for Silent Sky (TheaterWorks 2015), Peter Pan & Wendy (Shakespeare Theater, 2019), Georgiana & Kitty (Marin Theater Company, 2021) all by Lauren Gunderson, Gertrude and Claudius (Barrington Stage, 2019) by Mark Saint-Germain, Elizabeth Rex, Red Velvet and As You Like It, all for Chicago Shakespeare Company, among many others. 
She has participated in residencies at The Orchard Project, Theatreworks Writer’s Retreat, Weston Theatre Company Writers Retreat, Rhinebeck Writers Retreat, Goodspeed’s Mercer Colony, Sundance TheatreMakers Lab, Sundance’s White Oak Residency, Sundance’s Ucross Residency. Her awards include The Jonathan Larson Award, The Dramatists Guild Jonathan Larson Fellowship, The Constance Klinsky Prize from Second Stage, The Tilles Music Chair from Chicago Shakespeare, The National Art Song Prize, The Weston Playhouse New Musical Award (for Saint-Ex and Alice Bliss) and a Meet the Composer Grant.
Her past projects include Saint-Ex (book and lyrics by Sean Barry), which premiered at The Weston Theater Company; The Mistress Cycle (book and lyrics by Beth Blatt), which ran at the New York Musical Theatre Festival; Crossing Brooklyn, (book and lyrics by Laura Harrington), which was commissioned and produced by The Boston Music Theater Project, subsequently produced by The Transport Group, and won the Kleban Prize for best libretto; Alice Unwrapped, commissioned by Paulette Haupt for Inner Voices/Solo Musicals, and subsequently produced by Nautilus Music Theater, The Minnesota Fringe Festival, Baldwin-Wallace College and Pace University. 
Jenny holds an AB in Music from Harvard & Radcliffe Colleges, and an MFA from the Graduate Musical Theater Writing Program at Tisch School for the Arts, New York University.  She has appeared on many albums, including PS Classics’ release Windflowers: The Songs of Jerome Moross; and her song “I Follow” appears on Audra McDonald’s debut release Way Back To Paradise on Elektra/Nonesuch Records. Jenny has a solo album, Look for Me, available on all streaming platforms. 

Sean Barry, Book and Lyrics –

Sean wrote the book and lyrics for SAINT-EX (music by Jenny Giering), which was selected by the Sundance Institute for the Theatre Lab at White Oak, awarded the Weston Theatre New Musical Award, and premiered at the Weston Theatre in Weston, VT. Sean’s fiction, poetry, and nonfiction have appeared in numerous publications, including Bright Corners, Mississippi Review, and Boston Review. He has been in residency at the Southampton Writers Conference, the Ucross Foundation, the Brush Creek Foundation for the Arts, the Rhinebeck Writers’ Retreat, and the Johnny Mercer Writers’ Colony at Goodspeed. Sean is currently at work on SUMMERLAND, a new musical commissioned by Chicago Shakespeare Theatre (Jenny Giering, music), and WHAT WE LEAVE BEHIND (Jenny Giering, music), which has been developed at the inaugural Theatre Makers Lab at the Sundance Institute in Utah, the Weston Theatre, the Rhinebeck Writers’ Retreat, and Theatre Aspen’s inaugural “Solo Flights” festival. He is the author most recently of The MythBreakers, a Fantasy/Sci-Fi series for young readers.

 

*NEW DATES!!! NOW taking place April 21 – may 3, 2025
The Near Future

 by Nick Blaemire (Book) and Brian Mazzaferri (Music and Lyrics)

Nick Blaemire (Book) is a writer and performer based in Brooklyn. At 23 years old, Nick wrote the score to the Broadway one-night sensation rock musical Glory Days (book by James Gardiner), which has since had over 50 productions around the world, and was recently revived in a sold-out 15th anniversary concert at Symphony Space in New York City. He has written six other original musicals: A Little More Alive (commissioned by Broadway Across America, premiered at Williamstown Theater Festival, in pre-production as a feature film); Soon (premiered at Signature Theatre, won the Stephen Sondheim Young Artist Citation); Fallout (with Kyle Jarrow), Edge of the World (with Ethan Slater, commissioned by Artists Rep Theater), Quixote (with Daniel J. Watts, commissioned by Joe’s Pub) and Space Dogs (with Van Hughes, produced Off-Broadway at MCC in 2022). Nick has released three EPs of pop songs, all available on iTunes, Spotify, etc. As an actor, he can be seen playing Adolph Green in Bradley Cooper’s Leonard Bernstein biopic Maestro on Netflix. He is repped by CAA and Writ Large. IG: @blaemire

Brian Mazzaferri (Music and Lyrics) is likely a robot disguised as a person (or is it a person disguised as a robot? I always forget…). He is primarily known to the geeky underbelly of the internet as the lead singer and songwriter of I Fight Dragons, a chiptune rock band that has done things some would consider “cool” as long as you’re relatively flexible about the definition of the word. Such things include writing and performing the theme song for the network sitcom The Goldbergs (ABC, 2013-2023), writing and producing songs for The Muppets Mayhem (Disney, 2023), creating a 3D music video with Nintendo for the Nintendo 3DS, and having their song “Money” used as the theme song for World Wrestling Entertainment’s first Money In The Bank pay-per-view special. They have played multiple national tours as a headliner, as an opener for pop acts like 3OH!3 and Cobra Starship, and as a featured performer on both the Vans Warped Tour and Yo Gabba Gabba Live. They were even signed to Atlantic Records for a fleeting moment in the 2010s, and their song “The Geeks Will Inherit The Earth” briefly made it to #1 on the radio in Denver before everyone came to their senses and realized that this band was much too weird for this sort of thing and we should all get back to listening to regular music before the inversion of popular tastes could cause something drastic like the flipping of the earth’s magnetic poles or whatever. Also www.ifightdragons.com for internet stuff and rarely updated socials.