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TIM SAWARD is the former Programme Co-ordinator of Mercury Musical Developments in the UK. He graduated with distinction from the MA in Musical Theatre, Goldsmiths, University of London and continues to occasionally write and compose musicals in between managing the Compass Theatre Ickenham.
Tim's history in musical theatre begins with Tell Me on a Sunday and Joseph ringing in his ears from the age of four, following which he soon checked out the rest of Lloyd Webber and Boublil-Schoenberg, progressing by way of Peter and the Wolf to C20th classical, Porgy and Bess, Variations, Prokofiev's and Bartók's concerti, Poulenc, Britten, Grainger, Coates, Brecht-Weill, Jezek, and a fair whack of more abstruse contemporary classical, before finally (and from the easier direction) getting back around to Sondheim, and then backwards again to Cole Porter, Irving Berlin et al. He has always avoided, and is unreasonably prejudiced against, Gilbert and Sullivan (and, while we're at it, Rodgers and Hammerstein don't give him goosebumps either).
In a spell working with Darren Wayte (under the banner of toomuchinformation) he worked on a musical which combines animation with live action, and Faithful, a story about a white boy and an Anglo-Bengali Muslim girl set in nineties West London.
With co-presenter Thos Ribbits he has previously written two "pantomusicals", which are pantomimes (in the British sense) with original scores, based on Victorian gothic source material, but also using animated projections in lieu of set.
His research topics include William Finn's Falsettos musicals, Finn's A New Brain, verbatim theatre, Dr. Seuss' and Friedrich Höllander's The 5000 Fingers of Dr T and an extended project on the rise of the hip hop musical.
In theatre his tastes are also rooted in the C20th, especially Brecht and Brechtian-related theatre, with a special interest in the interaction of digital technology with theatre to create non-naturalistic spectacle (of which the 2006 Sam Buntrock production of Sunday in the Park is a triumphant example).
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