October 29, 2025

The Lab Series, part of Manhattan School of Music’s Musical Theatre program, will house season-long developmental residencies of four new musicals throughout its 2025–26 season.

NEW YORK, October 29, 2025—The Musical Theatre Lab Series at Manhattan School of Music (MSM) will house developmental workshops and readings of four new musicals in its 2025–26 season, featuring the work of Jonathan Larson grantees, a two-time Obie Award-winner, and a recent Tony Award nominee.

Directed by MSM Musical Theatre faculty member Aaron Ricciardi, the Lab Series uses an inclusive, open-submission process to select cutting-edge musical theatre projects with potential for professional life. Workshops and readings feature MSM student actors, musicians, and production assistants.

This season, the four projects’ residencies will last the entire season, with one workshop in the fall semester and another in spring. Each residency will culminate in a private, invitation-only presentation as part of a month-long festival of new musicals in April 2026.

The 2025–26 Lab Series season will be comprised of Starblasters, with book by Katie Hathaway and music and lyrics by Tony nominee Benjamin Velez (Real Women Have Curves); Magia, written by Letitia Bullard and Nathan Leitão; Pop Off, Michelangelo!, written by Larson grantee Dylan MarcAurele (Lewis Loves Clark); and A Short History, which has a book by Kate Walbert, music by Larson grantee and Lucille Lortel Award-winner Grace McLean (In the Green), and lyrics by McLean and Walbert.

Starblasters follows five friends who have spent the 10 years since high school hiding behind the nostalgic specter of their youths by working at the local run-down theme park. But with the park’s closure looming, they must face the future head on, or face the prospect of a life dependent on their parents, chained to a dead-end job, losing their ability to dream. Britt Berke will direct.

Magia is an original fantasy musical with a Latin-Caribbean fusion score in which a teen girl attempts to save her ailing father by stealing a wish from a magical island. The show asks, “What is the real magic, and how can we access it in a society that accepts the status quo?”

Fresh off an encore run at the Edinburgh Fringe, Pop Off, Michelangelo! is a musical comedy about besties-turned-bitter-rivals Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci, both gay and attempting to earn divine forgiveness by becoming the greatest religious artists of all time. With an electropop score as infectious as the bubonic plague, and a script that has not been remotely fact-checked, this Renaissance adventure is both hilarious and unhinged. Stephen Santa will direct.

Adapted from author Kate Walbert’s New York Times bestselling novel A Short History of Women, A Short History is a non-linear journey through time, unspooling the complicated life and legacy of Dorothy Trevor, a firebrand thinker and suffragist who died on a hunger strike in England in 1914. As it traces one family’s complicated legacy of mothers and daughters, the show reveals how much has changed for women, and how little. Two-time Obie winner Lee Sunday Evans (Oratorio for Living Things) will direct.

The Lab Series was created in 2021 by MSM Dean of Musical Theatre Liza Gennaro and since then has developed work by Will Connolly, Douglas J. Cohen, Dan Elish, Mark Hollmann, Greg Kotis, Anna K. Jacobs, Emily Loesser, Michael Mitnick, Veronica Mansour, Rob Rokicki, Don Stephenson, Vince Vawter, Jim Wann, Zack Zadek, and more.

For more information about the Lab Series program, including how to submit a show, please visit the Lab Series homepage. For press inquiries, please contact Katharine Burns, Marketing and Public Relations Manager, at kburns@msmnyc.edu.

ABOUT MSM MUSICAL THEATRE

Manhattan School of Music, with its more than 100 years of excellence and its location in New York City, a veritable hub of musical theatre, is an ideal institution for a world-class musical theatre program. Today’s contemporary musical theatre is exploding with fresh ideas, possibilities, and opportunities. While acting, voice, and dance remain the cornerstones of musical theatre training, contemporary performers must also be trained beyond the “triple threat” model. Now more than ever multifaceted musical theatre artists are in demand. Virtual musicals and online content, devised practice workshops and dance labs require performers to be creative contributors to project development. In addition to learning the essential skills – singing, dancing, and acting – MSM Musical Theatre students are encouraged to develop their artistic interests and are given the opportunity to investigate areas beyond performing, including directing, choreographing, writing, and composing. The MSM Musical Theatre faculty is a stellar collection of artist-educators who combine exemplary teaching skills with the highest level of professional know-how. We embrace individuality and honor each student’s journey. At MSM we are passionate about the arts and the next generation of musical theatre artists.

Liza Gennaro, Dean of Musical Theatre
David Loud, Program Music Director

ABOUT MANHATTAN SCHOOL OF MUSIC

Founded as a community music school by Janet Daniels Schenck in 1918, today Manhattan School of Music (MSM) is recognized for its more than 1,000 superbly talented undergraduate and graduate students who come from more than 50 countries and nearly all 50 states; its innovative curricula and world-renowned artist-teacher faculty that includes musicians from the New York Philharmonic, the Met Orchestra, and the top ranks of the jazz and Broadway communities; and a distinguished community of accomplished, award-winning alumni working at the highest levels of the musical, educational, cultural, and professional worlds.

The School is dedicated to the personal, artistic, and intellectual development of aspiring musicians, from its Precollege students through those pursuing doctoral studies. Offering classical, jazz, and musical theatre training, MSM grants a range of undergraduate and graduate degrees. True to MSM’s origins as a music school for children, the Precollege Division is a professionally oriented Saturday music program dedicated to the musical and personal growth of talented young musicians ages 8 to 18. The School also serves some 2,000 New York City schoolchildren through its Arts-in-Education Program, and another 2,000 students through its critically acclaimed Distance Learning Program.

MSM LAND ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

Manhattan School of Music acknowledges that we gather on the traditional land of the Lenape and Wappinger past and present, and honor with gratitude the land itself and the people who have stewarded it throughout the generations. This calls us to commit to continuing to learn how to be better stewards of the land we inhabit as well.