Sam Buntrock, Jerry Dixon, Rebecca Taichman Among Directors for NAMT Festival

The National Alliance for Musical Theatre (NAMT) has announced the creative teams for the 24th Annual Festival of New Musicals, to be held at New World Stages on Thursday, October 11 and Friday, October 12.

Tony nominee Sam Buntrock will direct Justin Levine’s Bonfire Night, about a rousing band of 17th Century English patriots who plot against their tyrannical monarch. Kimberly Grigsby will music direct.

Tom Caruso and Emily Otto will repeat their duties as director and music director, respectively, for Dan Collins and Julianne Wick Davis’ Southern Comfort, which they worked on at CAP21 last fall. The musical based on the Sundance award-winning documentary about transgender friends living in rural Georgia.

Kirsten Childs’s Funked Up Fairy Tales, a collection of delightfully twisted urban fairy tales for sophisticated children and grownup kids, will be directed by Jerry Dixon with music direction by Steve Marzullo .

Meredith McDonough will direct Triangle, Curtis Moore, Thomas Mizer and Joshua Scher’s original mystery/romance set against the backdrop of the infamous New York tragedy.

Rebecca Taichman will direct Sleeping Beauty Wakes, Rachel Sheinkin, Brendan Milburn and Valerie Vigoda’s musical that delves into the magical space between dreaming and waking.

Michelle Tattenbaum will continue as director of
Itamar Moses and Gaby Alter’s Nobody Loves You, a behind-the-scenes look at a dating reality television show, will once again be directed by Michelle Tattenbaum who helmed the musical’s world premiere earlier this season at The Old Globe.

Additional productions for the 24th Annual Festival of New Musicals will include Bleeding Love by Jason Schafer, Arthur Lafrentz Bacon and Harris Doran, a wickedly demented, post-apocalyptic fairy tale for grownups and The Circus in Winter, Ben Clark and Beth Turcotte’s musical based on the Cathy Day novel where legend and lore collide under the big top.

Although the festival’s 45-minute staged readings are primarily aimed at an industry audience, a limited number of tickets will be made available to the public for free on a standby basis.

Registration for Industry members is free and now open through September 30 at www.namt.org/festival.