Way back in the earliest days of the Internet as we know it (the 1990's) there was a place called GeoCities which provided free web hosting with a unique twist. The place was arranged by "neighborhoods" where similarly themed pages could be located together. I chose the Broadway neighborhood to create something called "Undiscovered Musicals: The Broadway Hits of Tomorrow?" It started out as a showcase for the many musicals that I had written but it turned into so much more.
To my surprise many people came to the site and I began to expand the page from just an advertisement for my own work into a home for other new musicals from all over the world. Over time the page grew and expanded into an information center on how to write musicals, a connection point for authors seeking collaborators, and a place for general discussion about the art and craft of creating musical plays. It was honored as a "featured site" and at its peak had so much traffic it frequently crashed the system!
During the time that web site was running I had one musical published, which so far has resulted a single production, signed a contract to have another musical produced in Budapest, which led to a free trip to Hungary and a couple of thousand dollars in royalty advances but no production, and received dozens of offers to produce various musicals at theatres all around the world, none of which ever actually came to fruition. Eventually GeoCities went away and I was pretty disheartened by the whole experience.
After that I returned to my rock and roll roots starting two bands that produced a few albums but didn't stay together very long, produced a couple of feature films that nobody has ever seen, self-published a bunch of novels that nobody reads, created an animated web series that nobody watches, and survived two heart attacks along the way. What I hadn't done since then is write any new musicals. I wrote my first musical when I was 13 and over the next 25-30 years I wrote at least a dozen more. I guess all those near misses and false promises just took the air out of the balloon for me. Now at 57 I'm back with a new musical adaptation of "Moby Dick" and a renewed interest in reviving my old web page. When I stumbled across NeoCities, which claimed to be in the spirit of the old GeoCities I knew I had to dust off my HTML skills and give it a go.
While "big time" success has eluded me all of these years my old web page at least brought a degree of exposure to my work, and the work of others, and affirmed that what I was doing had some merit. There were people out there who were interested in what I was creating and at the end of the day, which I hope this isn't quite yet, but with my heart condition one can never really tell, it's better to have some recognition than to spend your whole life creating art in a vacuum. So once again I bring the world my Undiscovered Musicals web page. Where it will lead or what it will become is anybody's guess but at least I feel like I'm still in there trying!
Scott Freiheit - August 2017.
A mythical land in a far-away place is convinced that their hard times are due to the loss of a relic known as the Ancient Staff of Wisdom and so they devote all of their energies and resources into the task of recovering it, until two enterprising young men come up with an easier solution...they fabricate one of their own, setting off a chain of complicated events.
"Cleopatra and the Slave Girls of Venus" (once known as "Julius Caesar Conquers the Martians") is a zany, romantic comedy set in the late 50's to early 60's and centers on the activities of a very low-budget film studio called Stupendous Pictures, which has generally been known for making stupendously bad "B" movies until a new writer appears with visions of artistic grandeur.
"What would you do with all the money in the world?" That's the question that's asked of the plucky, but naive hero of "Crusade" who inherits a fortune and plans on using it to cure all of the world's problems. As his enterprise gets rolling it soon turns into a target for every schemer, con man, and crook who wants a piece of the pie.
"Dark Destiny" is a musical journey into the troubled mind of the great author Edgar Allan Poe. Appropriately set in a cemetery, Poe's life "flashes before his eyes" as he struggles to make sense of the fame and fortune that's always eluded him and the tragic early deaths of all those he has loved.
Set against the backdrop of the Actors' Equity strike of 1919, which effectively shut down Broadway, "Equity" tells the story of how actors joined the burgeoning labor union movement in the United States and turned their craft into a true profession.
"George Washington Never Slept Here" is the story of a romantic triangle played against the backdrop of a progress versus preservation battle in a small town in New England. Part romantic comedy, part political satire, the show has had a long and bumpy road to completion.
Based on the classic novel by Herman Melville, "Moby Dick" is an epic tale of obsession and revenge as Captain Ahab roams the seas bent on destroying the great white whale that took his leg. It's a powerful saga of one man's madness and the lengths to which he will go for retribution.
"The Scarlet Letter" is a musical adaptation of the novel by Nathaniel Hawthorne, set in Boston in the 17th century. It tells the story of Hester Prynne, a young woman who has given birth to a child, although her husband has been lost for years, who is forced to wear a large red letter "A" on her dress for the rest of her life as punishment for her sin.
One of the more popular features of the original Undiscovered Musicals web page is back and (slightly) updated to reflect how times have changed since then. Some people found it useful back in the old days so hopefully the information is still of some value today!
A rather in-depth description of the author's many adventures in the land of theatrical entertainment.
When I started this page in the 90's web design was complicated and often expensive, phrases like "social media" and "viral video" didn't exist, and most people didn't have an email address, let alone a web presence. I offered to build, at no charge, fairly simple web pages to anyone with a new musical who wanted some place to get exposure and hosted them on my site. Today things have obviously changed a great deal but I still would like to showcase undiscovered musicals by other authors here. I'm afraid I don't plan on building any free web pages this time around but I would love to link to your web page, blog, or FaceBook page; whatever the main portal to your project might be. If I get really ambitious I might make it a graphical link using your logo but I make no promises at this point. Frankly I'm shocked that I've even gotten this far with this project. Perhaps I'll "feature" some shows that jump out and grab me but in any case I would really love to be a central clearinghouse for new musicals of all kinds again. So feel free to send me your link and I'll try to do something useful with it, and don't hesitate to plug my site. I may never be the "Internet guru of musical theatre" that I once was but from tiny acorns..."
