New York date beckons for East Sussex writing duo

The two studied at the College from 2016-2019.

While there, Joe and Frankie started writing a musical, which at the time was semi-staged as a Musical Song Cycle at the end of their time at the college. The musical evolved over time and is now ready to be performed at 54 Below, a bar in Manhattan, New York.

It is widely seen as a stepping stone venue.

Many of the musicals that hit Broadway have had early versions performed there.

Joe and Frankie’s musical will be performed at 54 Below on August 23 at 9.30pm.

As the venue says, “the show follows three young people attempting to navigate through life’s hardships whilst striving for a sense of belonging. It tackles important issues and personal battles such as accepting your own sexuality, feeling like you’re not good enough for the world and fighting to achieve one’s dreams and goals by any means necessary.”

The show consists of four different sections introduced by original poetry, providing a narrative for the songs that follow.

The original plan for the duo was to perform their US premiere of the musical in April 2020. However, Covid-19 delayed proceedings. But two years on, they couldn’t be more excited.

Joe said: “The two of us are super excited to be premiering the show at a venue that means so much to the two of us! Throughout our time at college, we would watch some of our biggest theatre idols perform on this stage and to have the chance to do that ourselves feels surreal.

“We are both buzzing to start! Whilst it felt like a blow at the time, the postponement of the 2020 show has given us two years to re-evaluate and rework much of the material in the show and we like to think it is all the better for it. We can’t wait to kick on and bring the production to the stage!

“Both of us really valued the support from college, especially the East Sussex Academy of Music. They created a culture that really allowed creativity to thrive and flourish and were very generous with their time in helping us to stage the first draft of the show back in 2019. A massive shout-out and thank you to John Sims especially for helping us bring Driven to life and for being incredibly supportive during my three years at the academy!”

Joe added, “It’s been great to start putting what we’ve learnt and what we have discovered into practice outside of education. Opportunities like this have shown us that we still have a lot to learn and that’s the exciting part for us. We are on a musical journey that we dreamed of when we started college in 2016 and we can’t wait to see what happens next!”

John Sims, head of ESAM at East Sussex College, said: “At the East Sussex Academy of Music and East Sussex College we are thrilled to hear that our former students Joe Archer and Frankie Redica are off to work in New York City”