Photo courtesy of The Hermitage Artist Retreat.

So many siblings share the same dream: that one day they will create something so special that the whole world will have to recognize them for their talents. That one day, their endless bedroom brainstorming will turn into something real, something concrete and that their childhood creations will be more than just fond memories to look back on.

Unfortunately, those dreams rarely turn into reality–unless you’re Daniel and Patrick Lazour, two brothers who have harnessed their combined love for musical theater into becoming one of the leading voices in the discipline. The Lazours, who hail from Boylston, Massachusetts, first made waves in 2019 when their award-winning musical We Live in Cairo premiered at the American Repertory Theatre. The show, which centers around the 2011 Egyptian Revolution, served as a vehicle for the Lazours, who are Lebanese-American, to explore different styles of musical storytelling, delving particularly into the Arabic music that they grew up listening to.

Since then, the Lazours have kept themselves pretty busy–they recently worked as artists-in-residence at the American University in Cairo and teaching artists at Lincoln Center Theater and are developing an array of future projects. On August 23, the Lazours, who have residencies at the Hermitage Artist Retreat and are finalists for the 2024 Hermitage Greenfield Prize, will come to the organization’s beachfront campus to speak on their creative partnership. “We have always wanted to work together and I think it came organically from just two brothers who lived in a small town and didn’t have many opportunities for socializing,” says Patrick. “It was just us playing together and even today, we’re still just playing together.”

In “The Lazour Brothers: A Lifelong Collabrotion”, audience members get a glance under the hood to see what fuels one of the most prolific creative partnerships in theater today. The Lazours are at the forefront of the musical theater scene, currently developing a theatrical sing-along experience about cancer patients and their caretakers in Night Side Songs and a musical movie Challenger: An American Dream, which centers around the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster. “I look back at many of the things that we write and they are really about youth and the idealism of youth and the disillusionment of growing up. That is one thing that we’re very interested in: the way that a young person can be emboldened to change the world. And how they contend with the truth of the world as years go on,” says Patrick.

August 23 6:30 to 7:30 pm, Hermitage Beach, 6660 Manasota Key Rd. Englewood, FL. To learn more visit www.hermitageartistretreat.org/event/the-lazour-brothers-a-lifelong-collabroation/?instance_id=1165

Photo courtesy of The Hermitage Artist Retreat.

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