We're Sebastian and Jonathan: for just over 17 years, we've been working on our musical ICON.

It's been a true labour of love: from the early drafts, sketching out the story (which is original: this is not based on a book or a film, or a tribute to a band...), to developing the characters, to writing the songs and the dialogue.

There was a rehearsed reading; a London Fringe production, a Workshop. At each stage, we reworked it, improved it, always in the hope that something may, but never with any guarantee that anything would ever come of it.

Now, the prestigious New York Musical Festival (NYMF) has invited ICON as a full production to this year's festival, which takes place from July 18th until August 7th, 2016. It's the greatest opportunity of our lives!

With a great opporutnity comes a big task. We have to raise the entire budget for this project ourselves. And we're nearly there: we've managed to find an donor to cover the bulk of the actual production costs.

But there are some essential expenses we have to incur that we still need your help with. Sebastian lives in London, Jonathan in LA, but we're both required to attend the Festival Orientation, casting sessions, rehearsals and of course the festival itself: multiple trips and extended stays in New York City. So even travelling by the most economic means and putting ourselves up as much as possible with friends and in accommodation such as AirBnB and Gypsy Housing, we can't avoid spending several thousand dollars between us.

Also, the work has to be orchestrated, and because we have a larger than usual cast (fourteen plus a band of seven! It's a big show...) our costs for rehearsal space, score and script printing are high for a production at this level. But it will be worth it: we are working with some exceptionally talented people and the show will look and sound amazing!

Please help us make this dream come true: we have a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity now, and any donation, no matter how big or how small, will pave the way towards our goal: to show New York our musical ICON.

We'll be eternally grateful to you, and who knows: maybe together we can write a bit of Musical Theatre history in New York, New York, and you know what they say about that...

Full Info at ICONtheMusical.com
New York Musical Festival Website

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July 20th, 8pm
July 23rd, 1pm & 5pm
July 24th, 9pm
July 26th, 4pm

The Duke on 42nd Street
A New 42nd Street® Project 
229 W 42nd Street (between 7th & 8th)

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Why is our campaign not 'FACEBOOK VERIFIED'?

Just in case you wonder: if you choose to make a donation, you may notice that this campaign is not 'Facebook Verified'. There's a simple reason for this: You can only use one personal profile to verify a GoFundMe campaign with Facebook.

This personal profile then becomes the 'owner' of the campaign, and anywhere it's shared or posted, it will then say "Help Us Stage ICON in New York by [This Person's Name]". So if we verify this campaign with either Sebastian's or Jonathan's Facebook account, then to anyone who doesn't know better, it will look as if ICON – The Musical were created by either Sebastian or Jonathan, which of course is exactly not the case, it's by us both!

But if you have any doubts and want to check us out (or follow us!) on Facebook, here we are:

Sebastian on Facebook
Jonathan on Facebook

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NOT-FOR-PROFIT 501(C)3 TAX DEDUCTIONS

If you are a US taxpayer and would like to make a larger donation that is tax deductible, you can benefit from the New York Musical Festival's Not-For-Profit 501(c)3 status and do so directly on the New York Musical Festival website. We will still receive your gift, but instead of going through GoFundMe, it will be administered by NYMF.

Thank You!