Drama Club is where the musical goes next.
The American musical has never lacked for talent. It has lacked a home: for the writers the industry has been too slow to find, too cautious to back, and too comfortable without.
Drama Club exists to be their home.
We develop and produce new musicals, supporting writers from first draft to first preview. The pipeline runs from Torsey Lake to Times Square.
drama club productions
We meet musicals where they are and help move them where they need to go next.
Creative & Lead Producing
Taking exceptional new musicals from development toward production.
Co-Producing
Bringing resources, relationships, and capital to productions we believe in.
Development Strategy
Helping emerging writers chart the smartest path forward for their musical.
International Fellowships
Connecting outstanding global musical-theatre writers with the New York community.
DRAFTS
Putting new musicals in the room, out loud, and in front of people.
Investing
Backing musicals we want to exist in the world.
drama club camp
The physical home of our development work: 65 lakeside acres in Maine built for making new musicals.
Musical Theatre Writer Residencies
Free week-long residencies for emerging and traditionally excluded musical theater writers.
Commercial Musical Takeovers
A fully resourced week in Maine for professional musical teams to get serious work done.
Collaborations
Making Camp available to nonprofit and mission-aligned partners working to move musical theatre forward.
developing artists developing musicals
Drama Club is built around writers and the musicals they’re making.
Meet the writers and discover the work moving through Drama Club.
shannon morrison
founding artistic director
Shannon Morrison is a writer, Tony-nominated Broadway producer, and musical theatre doula.
He studied psychology and playwriting at Yale. He went to NYU for his MFA in musical theatre writing. Then he went to Broadway — to productions including Thoroughly Modern Millie, Movin' Out, and Legally Blonde — and learned from the inside how the industry works, and who it leaves out.
He served as IMC's Chief Creative Officer, where he got very good at two things: helping people in power say what they actually meant, and understanding what moves an audience.
In 2020, he and Scott Ihrig founded Drama Club. Two years later they opened Drama Club Camp — built not around a curriculum but around a community: writers helping writers, in enough numbers to actually change what gets made.
His husband Scott is the reason the impossible has an address — the partner who takes Shannon's wildest instincts and makes them load-bearing.
He has spent his career learning how to galvanize teams around a creative vision. Drama Club is where that work lives.
scott ihrig
founding executive producer
Scott Ihrig is a Tony-nominated producer and serial entrepreneur who keeps building his way back to theatre.
He founded IMC more than twenty years ago and grew it from a startup into a global experience agency — one of the fastest-growing private companies in the country.
When he and Shannon Morrison returned to theatre, they found extraordinary writers with nowhere to go — stranded not for lack of talent but for lack of infrastructure. They couldn't find an on-ramp that fit the writers they believed in, so they built one.
Shannon had the vision for Drama Club Camp. Scott built the structure around it — the partnerships, funding models, and producing infrastructure that allow Drama Club to support writers from first draft to opening night.
His producing and investing credits include [title of show] (Off-Broadway), 13 (Broadway), and the Radio City Christmas Spectacular starring the Rockettes.
His husband Shannon is the entropy in the system — the person who breaks the pattern, introduces the impossible idea, and makes Scott build things he never would have arrived at alone.
The nonprofit theatre in Iowa, the law practice in Minneapolis, the queer political organizing — none of it is a detour. It's the education of an entrepreneur who builds for people the system wasn't designed to serve.
