The Stephen Sondheim Society Student Performer of the Year will take place on the afternoon of Sun May 27^th at The Queens Theatre, with the heats held on Sun April 1^st. We are pleased to invite colleges to submit students to take part; or if you are a student, make sure that your tutors are applying! All finalists will appear on a West End stage, the winning student will receive a prize of £1,000 and a trophy and (new this year) the runner-up will receive a prize of £250. Judges so far include Laurie Sansom (Artistic Director of the Royal & Derngate, Northampton) and producer of Wicked Michael McCabe. For further info please email  Lynne on  sondheimsociety@sondheim.org

 The competition is in two parts: the initial heat will be held on Sunday April 1^st at the Royal Academy of Music, in private; then the competition final will take place at 3pm on Sunday May 27^th at The Queens Theatre (courtesy of Society Patron Sir Cameron Mackintosh) in front of a panel of judges from the industry and an audience of industry professionals and the public.

We are inviting you to submit two students, preferably one male and one female, to take part in the contest. Please note that all students must be aged 18 or over by the date of the heats (April 1^st). For these heats they will each be asked to sing one song written by Stephen Sondheim. From there, twelve finalists will be chosen and they will be asked to prepare and to perform one Sondheim piece and one new song by writers who are members of Mercury Musical Developments (www.mercurymusicals.com), an organisation dedicated to developing the craft of book, music and lyric writing in musical theatre. The successful students will be supplied with the new pieces from which to choose a song.

Chaired by Edward Seckerson, the finals’ judging panel will consist of leading industry professionals.  This is the sixth year of the event; past hosts and judges have included Maria Friedman, Sally-Anne Triplett, David Babani, Julia McKenzie, Hannah Waddingham, Maureen Lipman, Gareth Valentine, Kim Criswell, Philip Quast, Haydn Gwynne, director Timothy Sheader and Tony-winning MD Sarah Travis so there will be a strong industry presence. This year we have so far confirmed Laurie Sansom (Artistic Director of the Royal & Derngate, Northampton) and producer of Wicked Michael McCabe, with Society Patron Julia McKenzie presenting the prizes.

When you are making your student selection, do keep in mind that the prize is for Student Performer of the Year and so the emphasis will be on “performance”, not just “voice”, i.e. an amalgam of voice, character, insight, communication: someone who truly inhabits the songs they choose and brings them to life for their audience.

Their choice of songs may also say something about them; we would encourage them for their own sakes not to go for the more well-known Sondheim songs, especially for the finals. Those colleges who have worked closely with their students over the years have tended to fare particularly well.

We are very proud that all of our past winners have gone on to professional success, and many of our other entrants too. It’s always very gratifying when artists cite their entry in their programme biography, stressing how important the experience has been to them.

Please let us know, as soon as possible, whether or not your college would like to be involved and we can then let you have an application form. If you are not the appropriate person to deal with this, please could you pass it on to the correct staff member and also please nominate a staff representative with whom we can correspond. Please note that the closing date for entries is March 16^th.

We hope that you will take the opportunity of encouraging your students to be part of this exciting new musical theatre development and look forward to hearing from you.