You mentioned accessibility in musical theater - there is this notion that all the great theater is in New York, or Chicago, or other major cities.

We started meeting with TikTok, and came up with Project Broadway, which is this overarching umbrella over ‘For You, Paige.’ TikTok decided to officially commission their very first musical ever, which is kind of crazy.Įven our ballad, it’s timed very specifically so that it’s just over halfway through, so people who have been there long enough are invested enough to enjoy that. So I was trying to figure out ways to take the idea of that project in terms of accessibility, and I started working with Media.Monks, who is co-producing this, to come up with some strategies. There were writers from all over the world who came together to create this thing. It aired on TikTok and even when we did sell tickets for the Actor’s Fund, we raised over $2 million from selling tickets for only $5. It was such an amazing project of creating accessible theater. I worked on ‘Ratatouille: the TikTok Musical’ about a year and a half ago. 'For You, Paige' will be available to watch globally on TikTok on April 14. PT via the handle.Īhead of the show’s Broadway debut, Mertzlufft discussed producing the hybrid musical, collaborating with other creators and the future of musical theater. “For You, Paige” will be the first live theater debut broadcasted by TikTok. When a producer approaches Landon about turning it into a full show, he runs with it without acknowledging Paige’s work.

“For You, Paige” - a play on TikTok’s For You Page - follows a composer named Landon and his best friend Paige, a fan of a young adult novel series called “Utopia.” Paige and Landon write a song together inspired by the series, which ends up going viral. A filmed version of the musical was livestreamed in January 2021, with proceeds benefiting the Actor’s Fund. Creators crowdsourced musical numbers, and adapted and arranged them into a cohesive production. His arrangement went viral on TikTok, inspiring thousands of musical theater parodies of scenes from the movie. After creator Emily Jacobsen’s ode to the character Remy the rat went viral, Mertzlufft arranged the song in the style of a musical theater finale. Inspired by the 2007 Disney-Pixar film of the same name, “Ratatouille: The Musical” started as a TikTok meme in 2020.

Ratatouille musical soundtrack