Rebecca Applin
Composer/Lyricist
Professional Writer
Telling stories through music is my passion.I studied Music as an undergraduate at Cambridge University, followed by a Masters degree in Composition for Screen at the Royal College of Music, and have been composing for theatre, dance, radio and screen ever since.
I have written many new musicals, several with family theatre company Full House Theatre Company including Snow Dog, Rapunzel, Hansel and Gretel, Pinocchio, Beauty and the Beast, and The Little Match Girl. My own, non commissioned works include Sex and the Village, written with Susannah Pearse and currently being developed by Perfect Pitch Musicals in order to be ready for licensing for production in the Spring of 2012. I composed Something Strange for Grimeborn at the Arcola Theatre in 2009 with Michael Caines, and The Walpole Orange which was produced in workshop at the Robert Atkins Studio at Regent's Park Open Air Theatre.
I have created music with casts of young people all over the country, including with Youth Music Theatre, and with Scottish, Hampshire and Hertfordshire Youth Theatres, and have run workshops on song writing, musical theatre, and singing with many different groups and ages, including a large community project at Watford Palace Theatre - Milestones. I have recently started working with the International Schools Theatre Association, who run festivals all over the world. I have also held the position of Composer in Residence at both Wellington College in Berkshire, and at Hills Road SIxth Form College in Cambridge.
As well as composing musicals, I also do a lot of commissioned work composing underscoring for plays and regularly compose scores for White Horse Theatre Company in Germany, and for Forest Forge Theatre Company.
Media composition has included scores for short films, and more recently I have been working with Made in Manchester - creating scores for radio dramas, including on Radio 5 live - and with Gamelab UK. The first piece I wrote for Gamelab was for a BBC Learning Zones project called Wanna be a Rockstar, recently nominated for a BAFTA. Current work for Gamelab involves creating a TV musical with, and for, young people with learning disabilities. Over the many varied projects I work on, I always come with the idea of music telling a story, and am fascinated by the hundreds of ways this can happen; by using nothing but the voice and textures made by the body, or creating rhythms with percussion, or playing instruments, or using technology. I love musical theatre and the fusion of all of the art forms into one creation… and the collaboration that is needed to create that.
That collaboration and integrating music with other art forms, for me, is what it’s all about!In another life, I also lecture (using my married name of Rebecca Warner!) on a variety of music theatre related courses on degrees at both Urdang Academy and at Anglia Ruskin University, where I am also a final year PhD candidate. My research focuses on looking at interpretations of meaning in the collaborative art form of musical theatre. Lecture topics include the History of Musical Theatre, Music Theatre Studies, and the supervision of third year dissertations on musical theatre, in addition to leading practical courses in Making Performance with the Performing Arts students at Anglia Ruskin.
http://www.rebeccaapplin.co.uk/
