Beam festival at Park Theatre to showcase Bronte family rock musical

A modern-day reimagining of Peter Pan and a rock musical about the Bronte family will be showcased as part of a two-day event in March.

The shows, in development, will be presented as part of Beam, a two-day festival at the Park Theatre designed to showcase new musicals. It will also feature panel discussions and networking sessions based around musical theatre.

Excerpts from Ella Grace’s The Missing, a reworking of Peter Pan, will be performed at the event, alongside Tamar Broadbent’s The List, a new show about four girls at university.

Wasted, a rock musical about the Brontes written by Christopher Ash and Carl Miller, will also be showcased, alongside Dougal Irvine’s Angry Birds, a “punk retelling of the Suffragette story”.

There will also be a series of pitching events at Beam, in which writers will pitch shows to attendees of their work in development. Those taking part include composers Tim Sutton and Tim Gilvin – who wrote Stay Awake, Jake – and songwriting team Jake Brunger and Pippa Cleary, who penned The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole.

At the event, producers will also talk about their work, including the Stable, run by Neil Marcus, and company Perfect Pitch.

Beam is a collaboration between Musical Theatre Network and Mercury Musical Developments.

James Hadley, executive director of Musical Theatre Network, said: “We’re really excited about the breadth of content, and the way this refreshes a sense of the contemporary landscape of new writing for musical theatre.”

Beam takes place on March 8 and 9 at the Park Theatre, London.