The PITCH: An Interview with the Finger Lakes Musical Theatre Festival's Ed Sayles

The Finger Lakes Musical Theatre Festival is a summer-long festival (May 30-October 20) located in Auburn, New York and produced by Merry-Go-Round Playhouse. This year, the festival will feature shows from Altar Boyz and 9 to 5, to My Fair Lady and Fingers & Toes. New to the festival, however, is The PITCH, a festival of new work where every night 2-3 writing teams present a 40-50 minute musical sample from their shows. Live audiences will have the chance to give feedback on these musical pitches and to see works-in-progress in a bare bones setting. The full roster of presentations is listed on the festival's website, but to delve even deeper into how The PITCH came to be, I asked Ed Sayles, the festival's Producing Artistic Director, some questions:

Me: Where did the idea for The PITCH come from?

Ed: I’ve always loved the movie Yankee Doodle Day with James Cagney as George M. Cohan. In the movie, Cohan and his partner Sam Harris meet with a producer, and Harris sits at the piano while Cohan “pitches” their story for a show in less than 15 minutes. Pitch. The idea stuck with me for a while. Over the years I’ve become disturbed at the production costs creative teams incur in the early stages of developing their musicals. So The PITCH came into being as a way for creative teams to receive feedback about their work without any out-of-pocket expenses. This summer, The PITCH will be hosting 20 new musicals, which we hope will give them a start on the way to being fully realized productions. I suspect that a number of wonderful ideas for shows have never reached fruition because of the financial burdens that accompany the development process. It is my wish that, in a small way, this will remedy that problem.

Me: What was the process like curating all the musicals that will be presented as a part of The PITCH?

Ed: Oh, it was great fun. Highly amusing as we were going through the shows. The PITCH Coordinator, Walter Ryon, is based in New York City, so he was in a perfect position to establish personal relationships with creative teams. The finalists were vetted by the Finger Lakes Musical Theatre Festival staff, and then the final selections were made.