BY STEPHANIE ESLAKE
Adelaide composer, protest song writer and musical theatre talent Josh Belperio is about to bid farewell to their hometown, and fly to New York City to pursue their dreams as a Fulbright Scholar. But before they say goodbye to their local community, they’re throwing a party in the form of a farewell fundraiser, and it features several world premieres of their original songs performed by leading Adelaide musicians.
Josh, a graduate of the Victorian College of the Arts and Elder Conservatorium of Music, achieved a Fulbright Scholarship to support their studies at the prestigious Graduate Musical Theater Writing Program in the Tisch School of the Arts, New York University. It comes after years of success in the field including their viral Dear Malcolm Turnbull charity video that helped donate funds to QLife, a sold-out show of Scarred for Life at the Adelaide Cabaret Fringe Festival, and a Helpmann Academy grant.
In their upcoming farewell fundraiser Songs for Crossing the Seas, Josh will reveal for the first time some of the pieces they plan to develop in New York. There’ll also be a silent auction featuring original artworks — and the entire event will be live streamed, which Josh feels is essential in increasing the accessibility of their performances.
Before they go, Josh tells CutCommon about their big dreams for the Big Apple.
Josh, although you’re gearing up for your farewell concert, it’s not a sad goodbye: you’ve made it into New York University as a Fulbright Scholar! How does it feel to be achieving your dreams?
Look, to quote the flying green girl herself, I feel so wonderful it feels like no one’s gonna bring me down!
Take us back to when you first saw New York City on your horizon.
I always dreamed of writing a Broadway musical, but I started actively pursuing a move to New York when I first auditioned for the Graduate Musical Theater Writing Program at NYU, which was back in the summer of 2019-2020!
With the pandemic and personal reasons putting a pause on my plans, I never gave up my ambition, and kept deferring my place in the program until I could make it happen.
What are some of your favourite musicals that have inspired you to study in this field, and to make musicals of your own?
Here are my top three musicals:
1. Hadestown
2. Hamilton
3. Sunday in the Park with George
You’ll probably hear bits of all of these in my work!
With the doors of opportunity open to you — unlocked through a lot of hard work, of course – how did you come to arrive at the decision to study at NYU? What were you looking for in a university?
I’m looking to both upskill and to find a collaborator.
Writing a musical is incredibly hard. It’s like writing an album and a play at the same time – and when you do both tasks together, they compound in complexity. NYU offers the program that for decades has been the gold standard in studying the art and craft of telling dramatic stories through song.
They also are renowned for fostering collaborations, which are important because most musicals are written this way — and it makes sense that if this form is so incredibly difficult that dividing the intellectual labour is the tried and tested way to go. There are of course genius solo artists who make it happen all on their own, though.
So how would you define this pivotal stage in your career — and what do you expect you’ll achieve through this big move to New York City?
Where I’m at now is that I’ve done a lot of creating on my own, and I’m ready to spend the next two years working collaboratively to see what I can create as part of a team.
I also hope to get a foothold in New York City. One of the events that I’m most excited about is our culminating experience in which we present a song from our thesis musical at Joe’s Pub with equity performers and a band – and Joe’s Pub is a legendary Manhattan venue for new musical theatre and cabaret.
At your fundraiser, you’re going to be premiering many of your own musical theatre songs, and they’ll be performed by acclaimed Adelaide artists. That in itself is a big deal. So I’d love to know how you chose the songs that you wanted to present to Australia for the first time, right before you go.
The concert is essentially a snapshot of where I am at this moment in time as an artist.
I’ll be presenting excerpts of the projects that I’m excited by right now — ones that are actively undergoing development, and whose development I plan on continuing in New York City.
What do you hope to gain from the musical theatre scene when you travel to America?
I’ve been told that the musical theatre scene in New York has a vibrancy that is totally unparalleled. I just want to know what it feels like to be part of that ecosystem that exists from showings at Joe’s Pub to Off-Broadway productions to Broadway itself, and of course my student environment.
I feel like it will enrich me as an artist in ways that I can’t quantify or fully articulate yet.
On the flip side, what do you think are some of the strengths of musical theatre in Australia? And how could those be developed to help ensure the future of a thriving musical theatre scene?
I think our best musicals are, in a word, weird.
A teenager kidnaps her idol, an international superstar called Harry, whom she holds hostage in her closet – wild. This is the plot of the fantastic Fangirls by Yve Blake.
A zombie apocalypse coincides with the opening night of a community theatre musical – also wild, and the plot of the genre-bending Zombie! by Laura Murphy.
The writers that I’ve just mentioned are showing us all a masterclass in how to embrace your weird, your left-of-centre pizzazz, and I love watching them do their thing. But that’s exactly it – the one way that I think our industry could improve is more opportunities for us to watch each other do our thing.
In the United States, the musical theatre industry is largely confined to the relatively tiny island of Manhattan. I hear that everyone turns up to see everyone else’s work. In Australia, it is spread across every city in every state of this vast continent. We have no centralised musical theatre ecosystem, and the only way to see work is to be in that city already or to travel.
There’s a really obvious answer to this problem, and it’s more live streaming. If I could live in Adelaide and watch all the latest musicals at the Hayes, at Melbourne Theatre Company, at Perth Fringe, at Brisbane Festival, at our incubators for new work, then that would go a long way towards building a community of musical theatre writers. And what I learned from my in-person audition at NYU back in 2020 is that community is so important. There is something about discussing with peers, providing constructive feedback, and striving for excellence together that feels really essential. Art is not made in a vacuum. More live streaming could be a really good start.
Final words of farewell?
For the reason I gave above, as well as for accessibility in general, my farewell concert will be live streamed. So I hope you will be able to catch it, wherever you live!
Hear Josh Belperio’s Songs for Crossing the Seas at 7pm July 5 in the Goodwood Institute.
Images supplied.
