Craving live performance? IndieWorks Theatre Company’s Jonathon Lynch has taken care of this. Bite-Sized Broadway: A Mini-Musical Podcast is a musical theater program featuring new and exciting “mini-musicals” presented as fully-produced radio plays, complete with lush orchestrations and captivating sound effects. Premieres will happen every first and third Monday of the month with an original 50-minute presentation that has the added bonus of interviews with the show’s team. Jonathon, who is the musical director of each spectacle, told “Un-Block The Music,” that the shows hail from all over the globe. And…wait until you see the casts!!!!
First up, the premiere yesterday of The Getaway, book and lyrics by Jared Corak. Music is by Joshua Cerdenia. Check it out here : http://bitesizedbroadway.indieworkstheatre.com/1340977/5554786-the-getaway
The musical is about an Uber driver, hoping to someday make enough money so that he and his wife can make the perfect getaway to a place where life and time move slowly. But when a pair of bank robbers lose their getaway driver, they hire him! What happens next? The show stars Rick Negron, Johanna Carlisle Zepeda, A.J. Holms, Andy Robinson and Lance Roberts.
While Bite Sized Broadway is a perfect outlet for theater lovers during this Coronavirus shutdown, Jonathan said the idea for the show started before the pandemic which just complicated it all in terms of the technical aspect. While the original thought was to use each other’s home studios, well….that couldn’t happen. So, what did they do?
“We explored three or four ways that people work remotely and then we smashed the ideas together to find our own way through it,” Jonathon said. The shows were created first…just as you create theater with rehearsals and music sheet mock ups. Then, they spoke with those in the voice over world and found out what kinds of software used there. Then, of course, there are the studio recording people who are used to being in separate locations. “They always prepare tracks so that people can get it and start creating on top of it even if they are not in the same room.” Jonathan said, the recording of USA For Africa’s “We Are the World”, back in 1985 comes to mind. As readers of “Un-Block The Music” know, I extensively covered music production and recording studios during my career, and I couldn’t help but think about Phil Ramone and Frank Sinatra’s “Duets” recording back in 1993. Frank recorded duets with many younger amazing artists, and they were never actually in the same studio. The album was very well received by fans and it went triple platinum. Some critics hated the fact that there was no direct interaction with artists, but new technologies today have changed all that and made it all so very commonplace to record this way while still keeping it exciting.
Un-Block The Music” asked Jonathon where the idea for these mini musicals came from. “Every writer I know has 20 minute musicals just sitting around. Shows they created for workshops, contests, classes. These programs are amazing work from fantastic writers working in a smaller sized forum. Our episodes will be widely experimental, tuneful and heartfelt and presented in a very compact way.”
Jonathon says he got a lot of help from Christopher Michaels, Andrew Fox, and Jeremy Terry in finding shows and putting them together. “We asked around, talked with the writers about their scripts and what they were going for in telling their story, learned about their score and any casting requirements. We asked them about dream casting, and we got a lot of those actors. These are all artists who have not gotten the opportunity in the Broadway setting yet.”
If you want to know more about Jonathan, I encourage you to go to his website: http://jonathonlynchmusic.com/.It’s really entertaining. But, quickly, in addition to musical direction, he is a composer, songwriter and he teaches at AMDA in NYC. Jonathon was the Assistant Musical Director on the Finding Neverland Workshop which was directed by Tony Winner Diane Paulus.
A complete list of upcoming Bite-Sized Musicals, their creators and synopses can be found here: https://www.indieworkstheatre.com/bitesizedbroadway! Some of the upcoming talent includes Telly Leung (Aladdin), Gabrielle Ruiz (Crazy Ex-Girlfriend) and Karen Mason (Sunset Boulevard). Interviews of some of the artists to come on Un-Block The Music, so listen to the show and stay tuned to the blog!!!
Un-Block The Music 