Musical incubator staging a second season
National Centre for New Musicals at Theatre Aquarius has completed its first year and announced the next cohort of works to be mentored and supported.
Hamilton’s incubator for Canadian musicals has one year under its belt and has announced its three new works it will support on their journeys to the stage.
In the development stream for 2025-2026 cohort of the National Centre for New Musicals (NCNM) are The Danish Guest with book by Steven Gallagher, and music and lyrics by Anton Lipovetsky, and The Blue Castle with book and lyrics by Saleema Nawaz and music by Scott Christian. In the incubation stream is My Beef with Beef, with book, music, and lyrics by Srutika Sabu.
NCNM has a mandate to develop original Canadian musicals through mentorship and collaboration with theatre professionals.
Some works under the NCNM banner have been in development for years and need help to get to the finish line. Others are really not much more than a good idea. Some are the work of established and experienced teams, while others are being shepherded by newcomers to the musical genre.
Someone on the creative team has to be Canadian and selections are made by a jury of actors, dancers, playwrights, lyricists and directors representing each province and territory.
For the first time, NCNM will host a three-day conference exploring ideas, promising “bold ideas, electric showcases, and big-picture conversations.”
The event, being held Jan. 25-27, 2026, will bring together composers, lyricists, bookwriters, producers, directors, dramaturgs, presenters, and theatre leaders to spark the future of Canadian musicals through panel discussions, and “high-impact project pitches, curated artist encounters, and industry matchmaking that will ignite collaboration and accelerate development.”
To make selections for the program, jurists are provided excerpts from scripts, along with one or two musical numbers, with the creative teams behind each production remaining anonymous.
For the most recent round, a jury of 16 theatre professionals representing a range of artistic disciplines evaluated all first-round submissions.
NCNM’s advisory committee completed the final selection process, led by co-chairs Michael Rubinoff, an Olivier Award-winning and Tony-nominated producer who conceived the longest-running Canadian musical in Broadway history, Come From Away, and Lily Ling, a director and music director who has worked on several Broadway musicals, including Hamilton, Hell’s Kitchen, How to Dance in Ohio, and Moulin Rouge!
Theatre Aquarius artistic director Mary Francis Moore, Sean Mayes, whose credits include Hadestown, and MJ: The Musical on Broadway, and NCNM producer Jenny Weisz, rounded out the selection process, which included interviewing the teams chosen to be shortlisted.
From there, each team was linked to professionals and the collaborators figured out an approach and schedule that works for them.
“There’s no formula because each show and team is completely different,” says Weisz.
Musicals are intricate, complex and multidisciplinary and have many moving parts, says Moore.
It takes skill, hard work and dedication over years to bring a new musical to life but it also takes support, advice and mentorship.
“Our inaugural season was a huge success, and we’re thrilled to welcome these gutsy, beautiful new works to the National Centre for New Musicals,” Moore said in a press release about the new cohort.
“The Danish Guest, The Blue Castle, and My Beef with Beef each bring such distinct worlds to life — from Victorian London to early 1900s Muskoka to a modern kitchen haunted by a ghost cow. These stories are witty and deeply human, and they remind us of the power of musical theatre to illuminate our history, our dreams, and the heartbeats of our families.”
Projects in the development stream are those with developed or partially developed script and/or score, including those with previous presentations.
Gallagher is a Hamilton-based playwright, director and actor, while Lipovetsky resides in Vancouver.
Their musical, The Danish Guest, is set in 1857, imagining Hans Christian Andersen’s chaotic five-week visit to Charles Dickens. “Hans Christian Andersen unsettles Dickens's home life and exposes the cracks in his marriage, yet this unexpected encounter reignites Dickens's creativity, as Andersen's unique charm and childlike perspective inspire a literary rebirth that will profoundly impact both men for the rest of their lives.”
The Blue Castle, based on “Lucy Maud Montgomery’s timeless romance and set in early 1900s Muskoka, is the story of a woman reclaiming her power and gaining the courage to live life on her own terms – and finding purpose, friendship, and love along the way.”
In the incubation stream is My Beef with Beef. These are early-stage projects seeking further to develop their ideas or drafts with dramaturgical support. My Beef with Beef features “two timelines and one forbidden beef curry, a South Asian couple's past collides with their vegan daughter's future in this hilarious and heartfelt journey about food, identity, and a talking ghost cow.”
In its first year, NCNM received more than 260 submissions, double the expected number. That pent-up demand led to four works in the development stream (The Pryce Academy, Out, The 7 Fires, and Clown Riot), and one in incubation (Limerick Gaolbreak).
“We have seen so many exciting projects,” Moore told HAMILTON CITY Magazine. “We meet each project where it’s at and provide what the artists need. Each piece is so different and requires different support.”
“It’s an honour to play a part in their trajectory,” says Moore. “This is not about choosing projects that (Theatre Aquarius) will or can produce. We aren’t staking any sort of claim.”
Part of the NCNM process is to help teams develop pitch packages and making introductions with theatres that would be a good fit.
“The goal is to create a pipeline and to create opportunities for shows to move forward across our country and to create more Canadian musicals,” says Weisz.
Works in the development stream get six months of remote support from playwrights, dramaturgists, choreographers, music supervisors, and directors, says Weisz. That time includes in-person workshops that ends with presentation of the musical.
Those in the incubation stream are not ready for a full workshop but the selection team sees a spark in what’s there to move it forward with support for the writers, composers and lyricists.
The team behind Out said their experience in the NCNM program was invaluable.
The trio of bookwriter Kalos Chu, music composer Ian Chan, and lyricist JuHye Mun worked on the coming-of-age drama-comedy when they were all students at Harvard University.
Out weaves the stories of three queer Asian kids in their mid-20s. It’s described as a story of identity, family, love and kimchi.
Chu was studying in China when he heard about apps to hire somebody to pretend to be your girlfriend or boyfriend to go home for Chinese New Year or other family occasions.
“The idea of these apps really captured my attention. This idea of, you know, feeling like you have to lie in order to protect your family and the lies that you tell to others, to support the lies that you're telling about yourself, right? So this idea of family obligation.”
They workshopped the script and music at the end of December 2022 with some friends.
That provided plenty of feedback and notes that led to a rewriting. From there, they mounted a full production in April 2023 just before they graduated.
Chan, who hails from the GTA, now lives in New York City where he works as a music director, pianist and music assistant for various Broadway shows, including Hell’s Kitchen and Smash. He was the impetus to apply for the NCNM program.
Chu, who works in the creative development department at DreamWorks Animation, and Mun, a singer-songwriter, both live in Los Angeles.
While the trio were in NCNM program, they had weekly meetings with their mentors Esther Jun and Lily Ling and set weekly writing deadlines for themselves.
“We are in different places now so it was very good to have a space to just so we focus all of our energy on this project with the help of the NCNM,” says Mun.
The workshopping process and working directly with Jun and Ling on editing and finetuning the show, culminated in a presentation of select scenes and numbers in the Studio Theatre at Theatre Aquarius in May.
Chan worked directly with Ling, who helped him with arrangements, while Hun helped Chu see his script with fresh eyes.
Hun says hearing actors sing her words was invaluable.
“Because I feel like as a writer, once you write something and you know, it's on a PDF, and you give it to someone, it's no longer just yours. The actors have their own interpretations. The directors have their own interpretations. And I think it was really enlightening to see.”
Chu says he wanted to break away from traditional stories about Asian people or queer people. For instance, coming out stories in real life aren’t always happy endings.
“And so I think we came into this show thinking, what we want to do is not tell a fable, a story with a moral or anything that is too moralistic or that posits a particular view of how things are or should be, but rather, we wanted to sort of paint a portrait.”
Out is funny and hopeful but also explores the vulnerability and confusion around human relationships. And the team will continue to tinker with it, but they’ve gained much confidence after the NCNM process, says Chu.
“We're so grateful that NCNM exists so that we were able to dedicate time and energy and space and everything to be able to do the show. And we think we still have work to do, so we're hoping to be able to do that and hopefully we'll be able to see a production of the show somewhere, sometime.”
Kalos Chu, Ian Chan, and Esther Jun 
Jenny Weisz 
Kalos Chu 
Patrick Park 
Derrick Chua, Ian Chan, and Kalos Chu
