The Debutantes
A Musical in Two Acts
By Sam Norman and Eliza Randall

The pitch
It’s 1940 and Britain is about to lose the war. In desperation, the authorities make a top-secret decision. The Debutantes tracks the meteoric rise and quiet erasure of the forgotten female codebreakers of Bletchley Park.
from The Writers
Why This And Why Now?
The end-point of this musical is not “girls can do anything boys can do.” That’s the starting point. The key question of this musical is: why does it take a crisis to enable a glimpse of social equality?
When the young women arrived at Bletchley Park, they were stereotyped as “Debs” (short for “Debutantes.”) The implication: they were out of their depth, and their main job was to look pretty. While the existing culture was solitary, male and mathematical, they were diverse, sociable, female, and young. And instead of changing who they were, they wore their identities loudly and proudly to win universal respect and change the culture.
But when the War was over and Bletchley Park was disbanded, the Debutantes were sent back to their old lives and forbidden from talking about their experiences. Mavis thought of Bletchley Park as an egalitarian “Wonderland” – but it was only made possible by a world war. A key theme of our musical is that movements, not individuals, lead to progress – progress in cracking or changing a society.
The plan
PHASE 1A
Initial REAding
- A table read of the working script.
- Date To Be Finalized
- New York City
PHASE 1B
workshop and SHOWCASe
- A two-week developmental workshop.
- Oct 20 to 31, 2025.
- New York City
The people
Sam norman book and Lyrics
Sam Norman is an award-winning librettist and lyricist for musicals and operas. His work has been called “well-paced and keenly sharpened” (The Washington Post), “delightfully funny” (Buzzfeed), and “witty, hilarious and completely delightful” (The Huffington Post). Recent projects include Come Dine With Me: The Musical (UK tour), Hairpiece (Kennedy Center) and Black Holes Like Donuts (Symphony Space, Prospect Musicals Lab). He is a resident artist at the American Lyric Theater and member of the Experiments in Opera Writers’ Room 4.0, as well as a Johnny Mercer Foundation Songwriter, an American Opera Initiative Fellow, a winner of the Stephen Spender Prize for Poetry in Translation, a Broadway Future Songbook writer, a three-time finalist for the Stiles & Drewe Best New Song Prize. His screenplay Gamestop won the ScreenCraft TV Pilot Fellowship 2024, and his book of comic poems, A Teen’s Guide to Modern Manners, was published by Little, Brown. Sam is a proud member of Mercury Musical Developments, the Dramatists Guild and the BMI Librettists Workshop. BA, Oxford University; MFA, New York University.

Eliza Randall Music
Eliza Randall is a composer, pianist, and music director from Boulder City, NV, based in New York City. She began playing the piano and composing music when she was six years old and has been hooked ever since! Her work includes Black Holes Like Donuts (Symphony Space, Prospect Musicals Lab) and The Yellow Wallpaper (Alleyway Theatre, finalist for Mazumdar Short Play Prize). A Johnny Mercer Foundation Songwriter and two-time finalist for the Stiles & Drewe Best New Song Prize, she has had various compositions performed off-West End and off-Broadway at venues including Lincoln Center (Broadway Future Songbook), Rattlestick Playwrights Theater, The Other Palace and Hackney Empire. As a music director, Eliza especially loves directing new works, and most recently she has been MD/Keys 1 for multiple shows at Pace University, NYU’s New Studio on Broadway, Dixon Place, the Scranton Fringe, and the Two Rivers Theatre with Joe Iconis and Sara Schlesinger. Currently performing on the national tour of Wicked, Eliza studied classical piano at Brigham Young University and completed her MFA in musical theatre writing at NYU Tisch School of the Arts.
