A Festival of Music Theater

Charlie Gilbert returns to talk about the music theater and the many new musicals being created and developed in Philadelphia during the 1980s and 90s.

We discuss the founding and early years of the American Music Theatre Festival, musicals performed at the Walnut and Arden Theatres, and the beginning of the Musical Theater Program at the University of the Arts - as theatrical and musical activity up and down Broad Street flourishes.

To learn more about Charlie Gilbert and his work, visit his website: https://chasgilbert.com/ - there's a great blog post there, by the way about his role in the creation of the Sondheim/Wideman musical Assassins.

And here is where you can learn about MusicCoLab, an exciting new organization dedicated to developing new works of musical theater in the Philadelphia area: https://musicolab.org/

A blog post on our own webpage, about the 1985 production of The Gospel at Colonus in Philadelphia, is HERE.