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About Our Project

Summit Stages aims to build a kinder, brighter world… one musical at a time. We’re going to do this in a way that thoroughly entertains and provides funds for our creators to achieve their dreams. But we aren’t all about the money or the entertainment. We’re about impacting lives and communities for good. 

 

This is a new movement, and our vision and potential are constantly growing and evolving. We invite you to engage with the goals below as a rough outline of what we hope to achieve and become.

Our Aims

Community

There are creators, producers and fans all over the world who are already treating musicals as a powerful tool for building belonging and wholeness. But right now, we’re largely working in isolation, and sometimes our religious, political and ethnic differences even pit us against each other. We are stronger together and have much more to offer than we can ever do apart. So we are gathering a critical mass of creators, producers and fans from a broad variety of backgrounds who share a common commitment to producing or supporting musicals with messages and production values that both build belonging and promote wholeness.

 

We will welcome each other across differences of culture, faith, politics and experience, share about our questions and our discoveries, and develop synergy. We will hold conferences, where we can meet, learn together and support each other in person. We will beat the isolation and become a mighty force for good.

Mentorship

Summit Stages is far from the first organization to see a need for more musicals that build wholeness. Families and theatres, especially in values-conscious communities, have been calling for them for decades and Disney responded by launching stage musicals in 1994. Numerous independent creators have also been responding to that need. But independent teams needs mentorship to achieve the level of quality that one expects from a Broadway/West End script and score.

 

Creators in New York, USA or London, England can apply to the BMI-Lehman Engle Musical Theatre Workshop (New York) or to Book, Music and Lyrics (London) for mentorship and training in the craft of writing musicals. These are in-depth, in-person, year-long workshops and highly educational. But they are only available to people living in New York or London, and they are tied to Broadway values, with its burlesque beginnings and its profit-first motive that can be blind to wholeness. 

 

We aim to launch a similar workshop but one that is online and available to motivated members wherever they live. Through our workshop, our experienced creators can share their hard-won wisdom with our emerging creators. We can all hone our craft together. 

Collaboration

People across the world are already harnessing the unique power of musical theater to build belonging and wholeness. But these individuals and teams frequently work in isolation, with little interaction across religious, political and ethnic divides. By contrast, the messages we hope to convey are broadly applicable and important. They deserve to touch as many people as possible, and by working only with our in-group, we limit their reach and their power.

 

We are made stronger and our art becomes compelling when we collaborate with creators from other places, backgrounds, and worldviews. Our diverse community makes it possible to collaborate across divides. And the resources and training we offer will help team members to connect with each other, get past their superficial differences, and dig deeper until they find common ground. Their work can then be entered into our annual contests for new musicals written by collaborative teams that bridge ethnic, ideological, political, religious and/or generational divides. 

 

The contests will be judged, not only by a panel of experts, but also by our community members (including directors) and the general public. This creates an opportunity to start creating buzz about new musicals, even before they are published. 

Publication and Licensing

Once the musicals we’re creating have been workshopped and honed to world-class quality, we’ll publish them and market them to the producers, directors and theatre buffs who are also part of our community. And after that, to the general public. If you submit a script and score that aren’t yet up to world-class, we’ll offer some direction about next steps to take to get it there. And we’ll look forward to your submitting again. 

 

We will become the go-to source of world-class plays for producers and directors who want to stage quality musicals that lift and unite.

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Our Values

Cohesion

In a world that’s becoming increasingly polarized and contentious, we build connection within ourselves and between communities. We show up authentically, with deep respect for others and willingness to learn about their experiences. We practice patience and curiosity in order to build common ground and tell shared stories, with language that is accessible to all.

Reverence

An attitude of deep humility and wonder strengthens our ability to connect. We hold space for each other to reach after the transcendent in our musicals. We honour each other's dignity and infinite worth, and we protect each other's right to conduct our lives according to our individual conscience.  We nurture respect for human intimacy by supporting the ideal of sexual relations belonging to a committed partnership between equals. In that spirit, we avoid demeaning stereotypes and gratuitous sexual content or innuendo. 

Quality

Great stories deserve great art. We honour our stories by study, revision, mentorship and collaboration in order to hone our craft and produce world-class musicals.

Collaboration

Whether our differences are cultural, ideological or something else, we become richer and our stories more meaningful as we collaborate across divides. We work as equals, without trying to dominate each other. We build systemic support for collaboration into our very structure in order to empower each other to bring our whole selves to the table.

Nurture

We believe that there are exceptionally gifted individuals within the rising generation whose contributions we need now to help us meet the challenges of our times. The world can't afford to wait for them to be discovered, so we are seeking them out, helping them learn their craft, and giving them an avenue to launch their careers.

Inspiration

Great shows do more than entertain; they change us for the better. We are dedicated to bringing great stories to the stage, including ones inspired by the sacred literature that gives meaning and purpose to the lives of our artists. When we can connect with the precious values of our neighbours, we can all move forward, together, toward a brighter tomorrow.

Our People

As we gather, this space will fill up with many faces, representing a broad diversity of offerings. For now, here's a bit about me.

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