Less Is More: What NAMT Taught Me About the 29-Hour Reading

Written by Producer & TMS Mentor, Jonathan Hogue

This past October, I had the pleasure of attending the NAMT Festival, one of my favorite annual showcases of up-and-coming musical theatre talent. It’s an electric experience, being in a room full of artists on the cusp of becoming the next Broadway household names. What makes NAMT special is its curation of a wide range of writing voices, communities, musical styles, production scales, and imaginative stories - whatever your taste, you’re bound to find something right up your alley.

Part of what excites me about the festival every year is how many shows I can see in a single day. If you asked me to sit through four 2.5-hour musical readings in one day, I’d probably tap out after the second. But with each presentation running under an hour, it’s a much easier ask. I feel the same way at the Edinburgh Fringe, where I somehow saw 28 shows in four days this past summer and could have kept going.

That’s gotten me thinking about how we use the 29-Hour Reading as a first stage of development. I get invited to a lot of these, and I’ve started to wonder whether, in some cases, a condensed presentation might work better than presenting the full show. 

Here’s a few reasons why:

1. A condensed presentation is a much more appealing commitment for a producer.
I attend most readings during the workday (which I far prefer to weeknights or weekends), but fitting a 2.5-hour reading around standing weekly meetings and time-sensitive email threads can often be hard. A reading can also be an uncomfortable experience - at most 29-Hour Readings, industry guests sit on cold metal chairs in a fluorescent-lit rehearsal room, watching actors read from scripts on music stands. Even when the material is great, a busy producer who has already attended two or three long readings that week might be less inclined to attend another. An hour commitment is a much different, and much more palatable, ask.

2. I usually know how I feel about a show within 10 minutes.
Sure, a dynamic ending has won me over now and then. But if the concept hasn’t drawn me in within the first few minutes, I usually can determine whether the show is for me. After that, winning me over gets harder, because I’ve started thinking about all the work piling up while my phone is away. A shorter presentation lets me settle into the material without worrying about how long I’ve been away from work, and might even keep me open to having my mind changed.

3. A short presentation makes me want to engage.
Some shows at past NAMT festivals excited me not because I saw the full show, but because I saw its potential. That boost of curiosity has made me reach out to the writer and say, “I’d love to see more." Once my interest has been piqued, I’m much more likely to read the full draft and engage with it seriously. 

4. Producers are looking for potential.
When you present a reading for the first time, you may be hoping to attract investors. But at this stage, what you need most is someone who sees the show’s potential and wants to partner with you on its next steps. Investors usually don’t come aboard until they know a show has commercial plans, but a good producer can often see the potential before the money arrives. In fact, most Broadway investors join projects without ever attending a reading or workshop, but they do so because a producer they trust told them the show is worth their attention. In early presentations, producers should be the first audience you’re trying to win over, and a condensed presentation may give them a clearer view of your show’s potential than the full one. 

5. Your condensed presentation might be your strongest presentation.
You probably feel the full show is as good as it can be right now, and maybe it is. But at this stage, most shows still have plenty of revisions ahead, especially once new collaborators join. Early drafts often run long or meander in places, and some sections may still be unresolved. You can certainly use your 29 hours with actors to hear the full show out loud. But when it comes to what you present to potential industry partners, think about giving them a taste of your show’s best material. Let people see the potential, and leave them asking for more.

Ultimately, you may decide to present the full show at your 29-Hour Reading, and that’s fine. People will still show up. But you never know who might skip your reading who would have come to a shorter one. And you never know which producer would start a conversation with you after a 50-minute presentation but would have lost interest after 2.5 hours in a stuffy rehearsal room.

Will the condensed, festival-style presentation replace the full reading? I doubt it. But as attention spans get shorter and more shows move to shorter runtimes with no intermission, it’s worth asking whether “less is more” might serve your show better.