In June of this year, Eliza and I learned – with, let’s just say, no little shock – that we’d won the 2025 MTI Stiles + Drewe Mentorship Prize with our musical Echolocation.

We knew all about Stiles and Drewe, of course. They were musical theatre writing legends, the brilliant minds behind Honk! and Betty Blue Eyes and the stage version of Mary Poppins. If they ever needed a CV, it would boast over a dozen musicals, Olivier and Tony Awards, and a writing partnership in its fifth decade. I’d grown up watching their shows in London; Eliza had grown up watching them in Nevada and Utah. You know you’ve made it when your shows are playing in Nevada community theatres.

The mentorship prize is yearlong. The first part consisted of a writing residency at Anthony Drewe’s house in France – just the four of us. As the week crept closer, Eliza and I were full of excitement, as well as a few butterflies. What should we expect? Who were the men who made up the team?

I write this account partly to demystify the prize for other emerging musical theatre writers. But mostly, I write it as a tribute to the most wonderful week, with the best food and best company.

The Brîve airport is so small that there’s only one direct flight from the UK each week. And so Eliza and I found ourselves, one bleary-eyed morning, trudging through the RyanAir queue at Stansted towards that flight.

I’m more Type A (i.e. neurotic) than Eliza, so I was listening once again to Betty Blue Eyes, memorising my favourite rhymes (“Cash in a coupon / I’ll put the soup on”) and practising my loglines. Although I’d crossed paths with our new mentors a few times, I was anxious to make a good impression. This wasn’t just a chance to improve our show; it was a chance to network with two big-hitters.

And then, before we knew it, we were emerging from the Limousin aéroport to see the beaming figure of Ants – Ants, not Anthony – and I forgot all about the networking malarkey.

The first thing to say is that George and Ants are two of the nicest men you could ever meet. They’re also excellent company, brimming with stories and unprintable anecdotes. The entire drive home, Ants regaled us with their misadventures in Hollywood and tidbits of local history. He bought his French house – nicknamed L’Autre Ciel, a reference to their musical Peter Pan – in his 40s (and learned French to boot). George has been visiting him ever since, often for weeks at a time, and has written many a song at the grand piano in the living room.

Our most effusive host was the dog, a lively cavapouchon called Sixpence – named after their musical Half a Sixpence – who came leaping and licking us the moment we arrived.

Here was a typical day:

8:30am. Ants swings by in his car and picks us up from our gîte. He’s already been to the village, where he’s picked up fresh croissants and other ingredients (mostly cheese).

8:45am. The four of us – Ants, George, Eliza and I – have breakfast on the patio. Breakfast consists of coffee, a salade des fruits, croissants and slabs of beurre and confiture. (My GCSE French gets put through its paces.) Sixpence, who has already had her breakfast, whines pitifully until Ants gives her nibbles off his plate.

9:15am. To work! On the first day, George and Ants read our musical aloud in front of us – an experience that could easily have been mortifying but was actually beautiful – and then treat us to some of the best notes we’ve ever received. They start with a reminder that they really like the show (Oh God, here it comes, you think). But the critique that follows is neither sugarcoated nor severe; rather, it’s engaged, attentive, full of intelligent questions and honest reactions. The notes are both big (“This song isn’t funny enough to justify its existence”) and small (“I like that line – don’t cut it!”). They pay us the respect of treating us as peers, not students.

9:15am-1pm. Eliza and I tinker away at the show on Ants’s piano. Ants and George are usually in the next room, well within earshot, which sharpens the creative process.

1pm. A splendid déjeuner, again on the patio. Eliza and I quiz our mentors about their work and lives. Ants did a degree in zoology; he and Eliza speculate on whether the distant swarm of flying animals are swallows, bats or something smaller. (After some research, he later informs us they were processionary moths: poisonous as caterpillars, harmless when mature.) George and I chat about the English choral tradition – he’d been an organist, I’d been a chorister – and compare our favourite works by Finzi, Parry, Howells. Every day, we eat cheese and bread and tomatoes in a vinaigrette. Sixpence, who has already had her lunch, whines pitifully until Ants gives her nibbles off his plate.

2pm. Eliza and I make the pretty commute home down the hillside chemin that was once used by French schoolchildren. The hedgerows are teeming with blackberries. George and Ants have a few hours uninterrupted by our plinkety-plonk.

2.15-6pm. Back to work! The gîte has an electric keyboard but hit-and-miss WiFi, which has the beautiful effect of disconnecting us from the outside world. On hot days I write outside on the balcony, thinking I could get used to this.

6pm. Ants picks us up in his car. Sixpence is always ecstatic to see him when we get back, even though he’d only been gone a few minutes. He and George are both phenomenal cooks, and one or the other of them will have whipped up a delicious meal.

6:30pm. We eat aforementioned meal around the kitchen table. The wine flows freely; desserts are mandatory. Sixpence, who has already had her dinner, whines pitifully until Ants gives her nibbles off his plate.

7pm. Games!

Sometime later. Ants drops us back off at the gîte. There’s hardly any light pollution in this part of France, and the sky is full of stars. We sleep like the dead.

There are variations. Sometimes we give performances of the material we’ve been working on. Sometimes Ants shares bits and pieces of his new work. One night, our mentors take us out to dinner at a gorgeous local restaurant one night, and we toast the spirit of Howard Ashman (who would have been 75 this year).

In this way, over the week, we write a new song and completely revamp three more. It’s perhaps the most productive week of our songwriting lives.

Read more at https://www.samuelnorman.com/post/a-week-in-france-with-george-and-ants