Wicker Husband wins MTI Stiles & Drewe Mentorship Award

It's been a really phenomenal couple of weeks for the Wicker Husband team. Last Monday we had our pitch as one of four finalists selected for the Kevin Spacey Artists of Choice Award, where we played for lovely theatre people including Beverley Knight, Killian Donnelly, Clive Rowe, Danielle Tarento, Michael England and Neil Marcus among others. We were fortunate enough to have the talents of Anne Marie Piazza, Rachel Dawson, Ruairi Glasheen and Loren O'Dair there with us on the day to showcase some of our work. We had a blast and that evening we were invited to the Sondheim Society Cabaret Evening to perform 'My Wicker Man'. The evening performance was so much fun, just the one song (my kind of gig!) and lots of listening to brilliant tunes I had never heard before.

This Sunday 'My Wicker Man' was up for Best New Song in the Stiles & Drewe Song Competition and The Wicker Husband show was up for the inaugural Music Theatre International Stiles & Drewe Mentorship Award. We were privileged to have wonderful Lauren Drewe sing 'My Wicker Man' with the excellent Mark Warman on piano. In the event Best New Song was won by the thoroughly deserving and exceptionally talented Tim Connor for his song 'Back to School'. Tim is easily one of the most exciting Composer/Lyricists about in London at the moment and a thoroughly nice fellow to boot. Not that I would boot him.

But The Wicker Husband won the Mentorship Award which means a huge amount to us. Basically it amounts to a years worth of support from MMD and Stiles & Drewe funded by MTI, including monthly writing labs, 2 industry development labs, a weeks writing retreat in France and a fully funded Industry Showcase in the main house of the St James Theatre in London's West End. It feels like this award has come along at precisely the moment we needed it. We have been working on The Wicker Husband for two and a half years and it is just beginning to pick up momentum and generate excitement in the industry. We are hugely grateful for the award and are looking forward to being mentored by George Stiles and Anthony Drewe in the process.

To top it all off, we spent the whole of this week workshopping Act 2 of the Wicker Husband with some incredibly talented 3rd year acting students (who also happen to be brilliant singers) at The Guildhall School of Music & Drama. Their openness and generosity, together with their questioning, helpful suggestions, excellent singing and improvising led to revelation after revelation in the treatment of Act 2 and by the end of the week our work had been completely transformed into something far stronger and more exciting thanks to their help.

Now Rhys, Charlie and I have a little break from wicker world while we do other bits and pieces but the future looks bright for the Wicker Husband!!