Annemarie Lewis Thomas

Annemarie Lewis Thomas is a musical director, composer, lyricist. She founded the Musical Theatre Academy (MTA) in 2009, which was named as The Stage's School of the Year in 2012 and 2017.

Early career
Thomas trained at Middlesex Polytechnic, graduating with a BA(Hons) in Performing Arts in 1989.

From 1994 to 2004 she was musical director of fringe theatre company, The Steam Industry with productions including Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, The King & I, The Sound of Music and the UK stage premiere of Calamity Jane, all at Battersea Arts Centre (BAC).

Thomas has been commissioned by British Youth Music Theatre (BYMT) to write several musicals including CCTV, The Open Door, Girl In The Ashes, Great Expectations and Fool’s Gold.

Composition
Thomas has written the music and lyrics for almost 50 musicals including:

Thomas also wrote the music and lyrics for the following pantomimes with the book by Daniel O'Brien: Cinderella (2007), Puss in Boots (2008), Jack and the Beanstalk (2009),Aladdin (2013), Beauty and the Beast (2014), Robinson Crusoe (2016), Mother Goose (2017), Robinson Crusoe, Dick Whittington and his Cat (2019), Covidella and the Masked Ball (2020) an online production and Jack and the Beanstalk (2021).

She wrote the music and lyrics for two online films by Nick Stimson: Coming Home (2020) and J (2021).

Musical direction
Since 1989, Thomas has been musical director of over 150 productions, including:

Teaching, accompanying and writing
Thomas was head of musical theatre at the Hertfordshire Theatre School and a staff member at Middlesex University.

In 2009, she founded the Musical Theatre Academy (The MTA) in Islington, London. It was named The Stage's School of the Year in 2012 and 2017. The MTA closed in September 2022 after it failed to secure financial backing.

As an accompanist, Thomas has worked with Maria Friedman, Liz Robertson, Patti Boulaye, Rachel Tucker, Mari Wilson, Diane Langton and Peter Polycarpou, amongst others.

Thomas wrote for The Reviews Hub for several years. In 2015, she created her own blog which evolved into a vlogging channel on YouTube. She writes for Backstage.com and has staffed their Office Hours forum on occasion. She has also contributed articles to The Stage, Backstage.com and Drama & Theatre.

In March 2015, together with Angie Peake a dual-registered nurse practitioner and therapist. Thomas organised the first conference for UK drama schools to discuss mental health in the arts which resulted in the #time4change Mental Health Charter. Launched by Mark Shenton in The Stage in July 2016, by December of the same year 115 major arts organizations had signed up.