Drama Club Launches International Fellowship. O’NEILL and SAVAGE Named Inaugural Recipients
NEW YORK, NY — Drama Club is proud to announce the launch of the Drama Club International Fellowship, a prestigious global initiative designed to supercharge the careers of emerging musical theater creators. This high-status appointment provides elite international talent with a direct pipeline into the heart of the American theater industry.
The Drama Club International Fellowship gives one exceptional non-US team per year an intensive, two-phase residency experience with the purpose of advancing both the creative work and the professional networks of these gifted artists. The program begins with a creative residency at Drama Club Camp, where the fellows write and develop new work alongside a curated cohort of American peers; it then culminates in a career accelerator week in New York City at Drama Club’s West 43rd Street studio.
The inaugural recipients of the Drama Club International Fellowship are the Scottish duo Jonathan O’Neill and Isaac Savage. Jonathan and Isaac are an award-winning musical theatre writing duo based in Glasgow, recently recognised as “a writing duo to watch” by The Stage. The pair began working together in 2017 after having met at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland and have been collaborating ever since. Their credits include: Jack and the Beanstalk: A New Mooosical (Dundee Rep), Stay (A Play, a Pie and a Pint) at Òran Mór, Glasgow and Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh; Belongings (The Minster School, Southwell); The Great Elf Escape: LIVE (Fearless Players/The Ayr Gaiety); Tanya and Bon Appétit (Royal Conservatoire of Scotland).
Their adaptation of Jack and the Beanstalk recently played to raves at Dundee Rep, which is where West End director Stephen Whitson first worked with the duo. That collaboration led Whitson to share their work with Drama Club, wondering how we could engage. “I knew that the work of Jonathan and Isaac was special, and that if anyone could help them hop the pond and find a way to develop their community in the States, it was Shannon & Scott at Drama Club,” says Whitson.
"This new International Fellowship is about more than just travel and time; it is a career-defining 'power-up' for the most promising voices in the global theater scene," says Shannon Morrison, Drama Club’s Founding Artistic Director. "By bringing O’Neill and Savage to Camp and then introducing them around the theatre players of Hell’s Kitchen, we are fostering a unique cross-pollination of style and perspective that can only happen within the Drama Club ecosystem.”
The Fellowship is designed to bridge the gap between foreign success and the NYC theater market, providing the network, the space, and the creative "clubhouse" necessary to mount a career on a global scale.
