FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
December 15, 2004
Pirated! Hooks New York GM
(New York City, NY ) - The national award-winning musical comedy Pirated! hooked New York City's crème of the crop to guide its course to the Big Apple for its Broadway premiere.
Michael Mills, producer for Pirated!, struck a deal with entertainment veteran, producer/general manager Don Frantz and Town Square Productions, to General Manage the critically acclaimed musical comedy on Broadway. When introduced to the concept behind Pirated! Frantz burst out in laughter and immediately fell in love with the show. "It was great,"says Mills, "to have someone so well respected in the theatre industry and so integral to the process take to the show so well and so quickly."
Though Frantz loved the concept behind the show, the key to any show's success is a strong creative team. Mills worked for months to bring together a team that would match the caliber of the clever material created by Pirated! bookwrite/lyricist, James C Christian. The creative team includes international award-winning set designer, James Joy and Ann Hould-Ward, Tony award-winning costume designer for Beauty and the Beast. "The creative team for Pirated! is perfectly positioned to come onto Broadway," commented Frantz. "It's a team everyone would welcome to work with, in my case as a General Manager, or to go see their work."
Don Frantz is an eight year veteran of the Walt Disney Company where he was instrumental in creating Walt Disney Theatrical Productions and served as the Associate Producer of Broadway's Beauty and the Beast and The Lion King. Most recently, Don was the General Manager of the Broadway production of A Class Act at the Ambassador Theatre. With the advent of more family entertainment on Broadway, Mr. Frantz feels Pirated! is a perfect addition to the already great Big Apple line up. "In this age of Beauty and the Beast, The Lion King, Wicked, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, Broadway has become a mecca for the family and I think Pirated! plays right to that."
Pirated! received national attention when it debut at the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC as a winner of the American College Theatre Festival. Chosen from more than 1,000 shows to receive the coveted honor, theatre critics along the way have given Pirated! nothing but rave revues. "It knocked me out of my chair", gushed Jay Edelmant, ACTF national judge and a theatre professor at University of Northern Iowa. "It's like watching a five ring circus,…Just when you think things are going to calm down, another wheel is turned."
Edelmant's not alone in his experience with seeing Pirated!. Don Frantz tends to agree. "For the people that don't know Pirated!, they would come into this backstage, very clever romp of the 1920s," explains Frantz. "It's Aero Flynn. It's old Hollywood. It's all the glamour. In musical form, it's as funny as Noises Off which is one of the funniest backstage plays ever done."
Pirated! is scheduled for an upcoming workshop to fine tune the material and prepare the show for it's out of town premiere next year. After that it lands on the Great White Way in the fall of 2006.
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Press Contact:
Jay Michaels
Mills Theatrical, LLC
Tel: 718-874-8415
Fax: 718-874-8481
Email: jmichaels@millstheatrical.com
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