leo&hyde are a musical theatre partnership, made up of writer Leo Mercer and composer Stephen Hyde​. 

We write musicals that sound different - fusing original, electronic sound-worlds with contemporary stories about modern life and future technology to create a truly 21st century theatrical experience. Read more to find out what we're all about...
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The story so far...

It all started back in 2014, when poet and writer Leo Mercer decided he had had enough of writing lyrics to the music of composers who were dead. He wanted to work with someone currently alive. Enter Stephen Hyde, a composer who had had enough of not having any lyricist at all, dead or alive.

Together, they decided they wanted to write musicals - but they wanted to do it differently. They wanted to write music you wouldn't expect to hear in a musical, create characters you wouldn't expect to see in a theatre, and portray cultural worlds you wouldn't expect to find in either.
So they took an unlikely hero - reality TV star Kim Kardashian - and set her disastrous 72-day marriage to an equally unlikely mashup of modern electronic music and classical opera, to create a truly 21st century reimagining of Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro.

The genre-bending result, The Marriage of Kim K, debuted at the Arcola Theatre, London in 2017 to critical acclaim and five star reviews. Since then, the show has been nominated for a Manchester Theatre Award, picked up numerous fringe award wins and received attention on Sky News, The Hollywood Reporter, The Guardian, The Independent and USA Today. In 2019, the show was redeveloped into a full-length version and premiered in ACE-funded production at The Lowry.
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 Deciding that the formula worked, they set their sights on 2010s synth-pop and dating apps for their follow-up show, GUY. This LGBTQ rom-com premiered at Hope Mill Theatre and The Bunker in 2018; won awards for Best Show and Best New Writing; and  transferred to The King’s Head Theatre as part of their Queer Season. In 2020, GUY went on a 17-venue ACE-funded UK tour, to venues such as Birmingham Old Rep, Keswick’s Theatre by the Lake and the New Wimbledon Theatre. In June of the same year, they released the official GUY EP on Spotify.

Meet Leo and Stephen...

Leo Mercer is a poet, lyricist and dramatist, who loves finding fun ways to fuse old and new. He enjoys playing with language, listening to music non-stop, and the wow-factor of experiencing new tech for the first time.

But perhaps his biggest love of all is breaking rules, in the pursuit of something fresh, striking and beautiful - like mashing up opera with pop culture or putting misspellings and emojis in poems. He very occasionally takes this too far, like the time he misspelt Stephen's address on a birthday card to him... 😂 ​
Stephen Hyde is a composer, music producer and sometime director. Like Leo, he loves blurring boundaries between disciplines and digging into the past for inspiration. When he's not leo&hyding, Stephen works with his brother on their outdoor touring Shakespeare company, The Three Inch Fools, for whom he devises folk-inspired music with their cast of actor-musos.  

Stephen spends much of his creative life vaulting between his passion for the future and his nostalgia for the past. One minute you'll often find him drinking whisky and listening to The Beatles, Eartha Kitt or Puccini; the next he'll have a VR headset on and be pumping out Billie Eilish or Rival Consoles. Unlike Leo, he has an obsession for correct spellign and good grammar;

What's next?

Alongside The Marriage of Kim K and GUY, we have workshopped and developed the immersive millennial pop-musical Queueue: A Coffee-Shop Musical; created a spatialised sound installation The wind as it rushes through the turbine with Lancaster Arts, and begun developing an a-cappella musical about the 17th century physicist Galileo. We have recently been commissioned to work on two new songs for Virtual Reality animations. Watch this space for more details!

Our interests include:
  • immersive theatre and VR; 
  • electronic music and sampling in musical theatre;
  • pop culture and post-internet life;
  • science, technology and sci-fi.

We'd love to hear from you, whether it be:
  • you want to enquire about performing our songs / shows;
  • you have an idea you'd like to talk to us about / would like to collaborate.
  • you've seen one of our shows and want to tell us what you thought;
  • you're simply interested in what we do.
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Leo Mercer
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Stephen Hyde


Follow us on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram for regular updates.

In the meantime, get to know us a little by checking out the trailer to our 2017 Kardashian-inspired mockumentary web-series about life as a writing duo.