Featured Image: Michael Cassel Group
Australian theatre production company the Michael Cassel Group is aiming to release eight original shows in the coming years, with the first planned to reach the stage by the end of this year.
The company, founded by Michael Cassel in 2012, established itself with a flurry of big-name Broadway replicas around Australasia including Les Misérables and The Lion King.
It has grown since then, diversifying into promotion and ticketing, but now is ready for more with aspirations of premiering its first original project.
The desire to create its own work came during the COVID-19 pandemic induced lockdowns.
“We were twiddling our thumbs after COVID hit, but we thought: Well, what we can be doing is thinking and creating,” Cassel told Gordon Cox.
“I really think that we might have one of our first original shows on stage at the end of next year.
“The aim is that in 2025, ’26, ’27, we’ll start to see the fruits of all the efforts and investment.
“Because I’d like our original work to be an equal balance with our licensed titles.”
Original shows in the works
There are four shows on the group’s immediate development slate, with the first titled “The Amazing Mr. X”.
It is a musical “tale of two sisters and a spiritualist” featuring a score written by The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel songwriters Tom Mizer and Curtis Moore.
“The Life of Death” has book, music and lyrics by Joey Orton and Brad Silnutzer. It tells an original story about the Grim Reaper who is eager to retire but his daughter does not want to succeed him because she is in love with humanity.
The show has already had a two-week workshop in New York with plans for another later this year.
A third project in the pipeline is called “You’re The Voice”, a catalogue musical featuring the songs of John Farnham, while the fourth is a new musical from director-choreographer Andy Blankenbuehler that Cassel describes as being in its infancy.
In addition to those, Michael Cassel Group has four more shows in development for a total of eight new projects.
Asian expansion
Cassel states that theatre space is hard to come by to put on productions in his country.
“Right now you can’t get a theatre in Australia until 2028,” he says.
This is due to Sydney only having a couple of venues suitable for large-scale musicals and Melbourne only having four.
Therefore there are huge queues for programming space. As a result, Cassel is looking to further explore outside of Australia following success in Singapore and the Philippines.
“The strategy is to go where it may not be sustainable to invest in a full-fledged, local language production, but there’s an appetite for great theatre,” Cassel said.
“When we look at what sort of wholly new creative pieces we want to wrap our arms around, our mantra is: They have to be global, and they have to be evergreen.
“We want to create our own content and then go and find out whether it can play in Abu Dhabi, or in the Philippines, or Argentina, or wherever.”
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