We are delighted to announce the successful applicants for the 2025 Musical
Theatre Workroom Residency, who were invited to apply after being
nominated by a network of leading industry connectors.
The 2025 Musical Theatre Workroom will take place as a weeklong workshop-
residency at Birmingham Hippodrome in July.
The residency will be led by composer Fred Carl and lyricist & librettist Robert
Lee – both legendary musical theatre practitioners and specialist tutors from
NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts Graduate Musical Theatre Writing Program.
Find out more about each of the musicals/teams below.
Clara at the Door with a Revolver
• Composer & Lyricist: Ayanna Witter-Johnson
• Book Writer & Additional Lyrics: Susan Wokoma
Clara at the Door with a Revolver is a new musical with original songs. It
is a true crime story – murder mystery meets courtroom drama, with a
complex protagonist who goes on one hell of a hero’s journey.
Clara Ford was a mixed-race, working-class, gender non-conforming, pipe-
smoking, probably lesbian, 19th century single mother, who defied prejudices
of her day to become the hero of her own story. Toronto, October 1894. A
young wealthy white man is shot. The mystery of who murdered him grips
Toronto. After a blundering police investigation, Clara is arrested and
confesses to the killing. A media frenzy surrounds her trial. If found guilty, she
will hang. Clara takes to the stand, in front of a jury of 12 white men and gives
the performance of her life. After just 1 hour and 3 minutes of jury
deliberations, Clara is acquitted and walks free.
One More Game
• Lyricist: Daniel
• Book Writer & Producer: Mwansa Phiri
One More Game is an interactive rap musical that follows four friends — W, X,
Y and Z — who become trapped in a mysterious video game after one of
them attempts to cheat the system. What begins as an exciting challenge
quickly turns into a life altering struggle for survival, as they realise the game’s
rules are unpredictable and the choices, they are offered may only be
illusions. Set within a world designed to confuse, contain and control, One
More Game asks what freedom really means when the system is rigged from
the start.
Saf
• Book/Lyrics/Music: Ishan Mahabir-Stokes
• Book/Arrangement/Music: Rhani Mahabir-Stokes
Saf loosely follows the life of Indian Princess/Suffragette Sophia Duleep Singh
(Saf), the Granddaughter of the Maharajah Ranjit Singh of the Punjab and
the Goddaughter of Queen Victoria. Those two relations personify the internal
struggle Sophia has with her identity as a British Asian Woman in the 19th
Century. The musical will tell her life story through the lens of each of her four
siblings: Bamba, Catherine, Freddy and Victor. Each of her siblings represent
a different part of her and try to persuade Sophia that she should follow their
beliefs, but the question that keeps occurring to Saf is ’what do you believe
in?’.
Musical Theatre Workroom is presented by China Plate and Birmingham
Hippodrome with Musical Theatre Network, Mercury Musical Developments,
Rifco Theatre Company, Royal & Derngate Theatres and Talawa.
The Musical Theatre Workroom is specifically designed to support the
development of new, original musicals, and musical theatre teams.
As part of the programme’s commitment to championing diverse voices
within musical theatre, this opportunity is targeted specifically at new
musicals by artists from the global majority.
Photos © Misan Harriman & David Reiss