Editor's Note

Editor's Note by Jim O'Quinn

If there were ever an issue of American Theatre that should come with a CD attached, this is it. More musicals than you can count are discussed (and often vividly pictured) in these pages, from Off Broadway's festival-bred pop musical hit Altar Boyz, represented on the cover by the show's fresh-faced quintet of Christian crooners; to the glowingly abstract Umbrellas of Cherbourg at New Jersey's Two River Theater Company, the subject of this month's Production Notebook; to director John Doyle's revisionist, instruments-in-hand Company, now playing at Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park; to the dozens of contemporary musical-theatre projects (some alive and kicking, others still brewing in the minds of their creators) that Terry Berliner cites in "A Game of Love and Chance," her unprecedented six-part feature article exploring the various routes to success for new musical work in America. With or without CD, this issue is vibrating with the theatrical music of the moment.

Berliner's wide-ranging line-up of interviewees spans the professional musical-theatre world: She elicits candid stories from the power brokers of the commercial theatre (get the lowdown on how Tarzan and Mary Poppins were put together from Disney's Thomas Schumacher); indispensable advice from connection-makers in the not-for-profit sector (find out what Lincoln Center Theater's Ira Weitzman is thinking as he sits in the back of the rehearsal room knitting); notes on artistic process from the likes of directors Susan H. Schulman and Tina Landau and composers Andrew Lippa and Jeanine Tesori (with whom you can retreat to a lighthouse for a spell of creative renewal); and straightforward opinions from the leaders of musical-oriented festivals, university programs and advocacy groups (learn what Duke's Zannie Giraud Voss is looking for in a new piece that the university will co-produce).

But a caveat that Berliner makes early on is worth repeating. "If you write, compose, develop or produce new American musicals, but you are not included here, please do not fret," she writes. "This story couldn't possibly include everyone.. It merely scratches the surface, suggesting a few possibilities where infinite ones exist." Indeed, our radar indicates that new music-theatre is fermenting in any number of unexpected places around the country, not just in the five principal environments (commercial, not-for-profit, developmental programs, universities and festivals) that Berliner maps on her "love and chance" game board. Her tour of the landscape is fascinating and instructive, but by no means is it intended to cover the waterfront.

So toss the dice and see where Berliner's explorations take you. And remember that the best part of the journey is, in a way, still to come-listening to the sounds of music that make these dozens of new projects uniquely themselves.