Mercury Musical Developments (MMD) and Musical Theatre Network (MTN) have been awarded funding from the Cameron Mackintosh Foundation to support five placements as part of The Cameron Mackintosh Resident Composer Scheme.

The next placement will take place here at Theatr Clwyd. This will also be the first time the opportunity will be for a two-person musical theatre writing team, rather than an individual composer.

Through this scheme, professional musical theatre composers (and in this case a writing team) are paired with a venue and given the opportunity to be involved in a range of work which could include composing assignments on the host company’s projects, setting text to music or working on development of their own musical theatre material.

Applications to be the Cameron Mackintosh Resident Composers are due by midnight on Fri 10 Dec 2021. The placement will begin in Apr 2022, and the recipients will receive an all-inclusive fee of £11,500 each, thanks to the generous support of the Cameron Mackintosh Foundation. This is expected to cover 6 months of the writers’/composers’ time and can sometimes be spread across a longer intermittent period.

The exact timetable and the projects to be worked on will be agreed in consultation between the selected composers and Theatr Clwyd’s team, but it is hoped the successful applicants will be based in North East Wales for a significant portion of the six months.

Key opportunities are likely to include:

• Shadowing the Composer & Lyricist on a Theatr Clwyd/Chichester Festival Theatre co-production of a new musical directed by Theatr Clwyd’s Artistic Director Tamara Harvey.
• Space and time to write.
• An opportunity to pitch a project for a week of R&D & workshop showing at Theatr Clwyd.
• Shadowing a period of R&D for a new musical in early stages of development.
• Working with Theatr Clwyd’s in-house Creative Engagement & Music teams.

As mentioned above, the residencies are likely to take place over a six month period, to include the following projects:

New Musical – Rehearsing in London and Mold from Aug 2022

This will include the opportunity to shadow the production’s Composer & Lyricist throughout the rehearsal and opening period. Working as needed according to the requirements of the production, duties will include supervising edits of the score as necessary during band calls, technical rehearsals and previews.

Working with Theatr Clwyd’s Creative Engagement & Music teams

Our Creative Engagement team works with tens of thousands of people each year. This work is across generations and includes regular weekly sessions as well as bespoke projects. We currently work with people from the age of 4 up to 93. We have groups focused on disability, groups who are referred via the NHS, and groups referred from Social Services. Our Music Team are responsible for delivering the instrumental and singing education in every school within our county. They also run our 13 local ensembles which include choirs, string orchestras and brass bands. We would like the successful candidates to work with some of our Creative Engagement groups and our young musicians as part of this placement. The nature of this work can be flexible and agreed collectively.

New Musical R&D

We are currently creating a new stage musical which will appear in our main house during 2024-2025. The musical will be in the key stages of early development during 2022 and this would offer an opportunity for the successful candidates to track and support this process.

Applicants’ R&D

The applicants will have an opportunity to pitch an idea to develop their own work, which would receive a workshop and showing in the Mix at Theatr Clwyd (our incredible 250 seat studio theatre space which will be on our hillside for two years during our major capital redevelopment project). Theatr Clwyd would contribute to this R&D financially.

Should the successful applicants want to immerse themselves in the goings on of the Company in between the specific projects, there may be further opportunity to do so – in particular observing the work of the Music Team and other related departments such as Sound.

To be eligible to apply:

• You must be a two-person writing team who has already had at least one professionally produced piece of co-written musical theatre (which can include paid work for a drama college or other training institute) – along with other work. By musical theatre, we mean anything where music and song drive narrative.
• We encourage applicants who are Welsh and/or Wales based and from the broadest diversity of cultural heritages. Ideally the successful applicant will be able to be based in Mold or North East Wales for the duration of the placement periods, as well as potentially in London for some rehearsal periods.
• Applicants must be resident in the UK to be eligible.
• Overall, applicants will need to be self-sufficient, adaptable, and able to take the initiative to make the most of working within a large staff in a busy producing theatre company.
• It is preferable that applicants have a good working knowledge of Sibelius notation software.

The successful recipients will need to be members of Mercury Musical Developments in order to receive the award; however, you do not need to be a member to apply.

How to apply:

If you are interested in applying, please complete the on-line application form which you can access below.

The details of both members of the writing team are required on the form and once the form is submitted both individuals will receive a confirmation email with full instructions for uploading examples of your work in mp3 format (maximum of three instrumental pieces, songs or short excerpts – no more than 6 minutes each) that reflect the diversity of your team’s work. Please ensure you only upload the required files to your team folder once.

If you have any questions about your application, you can email martin@mercurymusicals.com or phone Martin on 020 7395 5461.

Timetable & Process:

All applications must be received by midnight on Friday 10 December 2021.

If you have been shortlisted, we will let you know by late January.

All shortlisted candidates will then be required to write two short pieces of music/song to a specific brief which will need to be submitted by midday on Friday 11 February 2022. Shortlisted candidates will be paid a fee of £200 at this stage of the process.

From this process a final shortlist of candidates will be notified if they have been selected for an interview. These interviews will take place during the week of Monday 28 February 2022, with Theatr Clwyd.

We look forward to hearing from you.

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