As part of the the final night of the Australian Musical Theatre Festival, an original musical about Launceston is set to hit the stage at the Earl Arts Centre.
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A hilariously original addition to this year's celebration will be a presentation of the city's very first musical, written entirely during the last festival.
Launceston: the Musical will have it's premiere on Sunday, with local talent singing about the stories of the city.
In 2021, composer Derek Rowe took on the challenge of 'composer in residence', sitting in various cafes and bars throughout the city, interviewing, interrogating, and eavesdropping on local life.
Over the five days of the festival, a song cycle emerged capturing the humour and heart of a community and now is the chance for audiences to see it come to life on stage.
Director Ylaria Rogers said that the idea of the musical came about during the running of last year's festival.
"Our composer Derek took inspiration from The Examiner articles and wrote a series of songs on what the articles were about. They will be displayed behind the performers as they sing," she said.
"Derek wrote it last year, he opened the newspaper every day and he found an article from that day's paper that spoke to him and across five days he wrote five songs.
"There was a rough presentation of those as a festival piece and now we have an ensemble and soloists that have made the show bigger and better. There are around 20 performers involved in the show."
Ms Rogers said that there were various songs, all based on different types of articles.
"One of the songs is called 'Miss Australia Tasmania Launceston', that was based on a newspaper article about someone competing in the Miss World competition," she said.
"There is an article about the garage sales and all of the little captions of people selling off things in their homes.
"We have a careers week article that was done on a school girl. Another is a talking about all the closing down of local businesses during COVID times.
"We also have song about a House of the Week article that we have turned into a comedy song. It's a song that makes you think wouldn't it be great to have my place featured as House of the Week."
Ms Rogera said the final event of the festival program was a celebration of local, homegrown theatre delivered by a mix of special guests and local talents.
- The finale concert of the festival entitled 'A Celebration of Australian Musical Theatre' will be held on May 22 at the Earl Arts Centre from 2-4pm. For tickets visit the AMTF website.
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