New Musical Premieres at Colony Theatre in Burbank
"Millennials Are Killing Musicals" begins previews April 30 at Burbank's Colony Theatre, with hopes of eventually making it to Broadway.
Rehearsals are underway at The Colony Theatre on Magnolia Boulevard, where a new original musical is making its first stop on what its creative team hopes will be a longer journey to New York.
“Millennials Are Killing Musicals,” written by Los Angeles-based playwright Nico Juber, begins previews April 30 and May 1, with an official opening set for May 2. The production marks the show’s first full staging after a development process that moved through workshops and readings on both coasts.
The premise takes the familiar cultural complaint about millennials and builds it into something more structurally ambitious. At its center is Brenda, a single mother trying to recover her creative identity while raising a daughter and managing work. When her influencer sister arrives, eight months pregnant and fully optimized for social media consumption, Brenda gets pulled into a world built around visibility, followers, and filtered self-presentation. The show treats its social media elements not as backdrop but as active characters. The Filters and The Algo function as forces that shape what characters want, post, and ultimately believe about themselves.
The score is pop rock, and the tone is comedic, but the underlying architecture tracks something real: the pressure to package yourself for an audience that didn’t ask to know you.
The path to The Colony followed a fairly typical route for new musicals trying to build toward Broadway. The show went through a development workshop at Off-Broadway’s Out of the Box Theatricals and a staged reading at IAMA Theatre Company in Los Angeles before Juber started working with theater companies on a full production. After conversations with artistic directors around the country, The Colony emerged as the right fit.
That fit starts with Producing Artistic Director Heather Provost, herself a Tony Award-nominated Broadway producer. Provost has built Colony’s programming around accessible, audience-forward work, the kind of musicals that bring people in rather than keeping them at arm’s length. The theater’s community programming reflects the same instinct. “Tunesday,” an open mic night running on the principle of “No Judgment: Just Joy,” is the kind of initiative that signals what a theater thinks its relationship to the neighborhood should be.
The creative team behind this production carries substantial Broadway credentials. Director Kristin Hanggi is a Tony Award nominee who guided “Rock of Ages” from a Los Angeles production all the way to Broadway, which makes her a logical choice for a show with similar aspirations. Music Direction falls to Anthony Lucca.
The cast brings together performers with Broadway and television credits across a fairly wide range. Emma Hunton has played Elphaba in “Wicked.” John Krause comes from “Hadestown.” Jennifer Leigh Warren was part of the original “Little Shop of Horrors” cast. Aynsley Bubbico and Michael Thomas Grant bring television experience. Diana Huey, an award-winning performer known for “The Little Mermaid,” rounds out a company assembled with clear intentionality.
For Burbank, this kind of production represents exactly what the Colony has positioned itself to do: serve as a serious step in a new work’s development rather than just a venue for established material. The Media District brings a lot of industry professionals through this city every day, and the Colony draws from that community on both sides of the stage. Casting and crew credits here reflect people who live and work in the Los Angeles entertainment ecosystem, not a company imported wholesale from elsewhere.
New musicals need somewhere to prove themselves before a New York producer will take the financial risk. Regional and mid-sized theaters that can attract top-tier talent and provide real production infrastructure are increasingly valuable in that pipeline. The Colony, under Provost’s direction, has been building toward exactly that role.
Tickets for “Millennials Are Killing Musicals” are available through The Colony Theatre’s website. Preview performances are April 30 and May 1. The show opens May 2 and runs through May at the theater’s Magnolia Boulevard location.
Originally reported by MyBurbank.
