NEW STORIES
SOMETIMES, THE SIMPLEST FORMS OF MAGIC CAN TRANSFORM AN IDEA.
As a director, dramaturg, and producer I’ve spent the past fifteen years developing new plays and musicals with a brilliant group of emerging artists. Much of that work has centered on underrepresented communities. I feel blessed to have directed projects that highlight the moment when a person cracks open their soul to discover the unique gender and sexual identities that lie within and to tell stories that explore the tension between the families we are born into and the ones we choose in life. I'm currently developing the exciting projects below. More details to follow as they become available.
The Church of the Alien Love Child Presents The Passion of Reverend Yolanda
Music and Lyrics by Reverend Yolanda
Book and Additional Lyrics by Justin Taylor
Additional Music by Phillip Carroll
Book and Additional Lyrics by Justin Taylor
Additional Music by Phillip Carroll
The Church of the Alien Love Child Presents The Passion of Reverend Yolanda is a musical based on the true life of Rev. Yolanda Mapes - from her boyhood in 1960s Muscle Shoals, Alabama, to her present-day life as a fully ordained trans-femme music minister in New York City. Her ministry is an interfaith, inter-spiritual, God-optional celebration of all the “alien love children” in the world coming together to find their family.
In our show, Reverend Yolanda, backed by her band and the Alien Love Choir, guides the audience through an immersive, musical church service and play about her journey toward her true self, “The Passion of Reverend Yolanda.” Bluegrass, gospel, rock, folk and Yolanda’s unique country-kirtan sound propel the Reverend's odyssey and deliver us to a trans-scendant gender land. |
Nasha America
Music and Lyrics by Dmitry Koltunov
Book by David Goldsmith
Book by David Goldsmith
Spanning three decades, and crossing the continents of Russia to the United States, Nasha America is the story of Yasha (seen in flashbacks as a boy of 10 who speaks no English), who with his family escapes the anti-Semitism of Soviet Ukraine in the shadow of Chernobyl to settle in Brighton Beach, New York.
When we first meet Yasha, as a fully assimilated American community-college dropout, his beloved sister has died, leaving him to become the emotional – and more challengingly – financial support of his family. It’s then that he follows his computer-geek heart and founds an internet start-up that could either launch him and his family into security beyond their wildest American dreams or – more likely – bankrupt them utterly. With its Russian Folk-inflected pop/hip hop score, Nasha America is inspired by true events from the life of its composer/lyricist Dmitry Koltunov. |
Then, of course, All The Things Happened
Written by Max Reuben
Remember when the stray cat died and that time you needed a ride home and the day you met your roommate and the day you said goodbye to your mom? How about that argument about the phone and the jammed printer at work and – oh man – do you remember writing and sending that email you swore you’d never send?
Then, of course, All The Things Happened is a kaleidoscopic play consisting of dozens of hyper-specific moments which – when taken together – attempt to get at something true and honest about what it means to be a living, breathing human being in a world surrounded by other living, breathing human beings. The scenes are written without character delineations nor stage directions, and the structure of the play attempts to mirror the way our memories evoke new memories – how it’s only when we look back and tell the story of our lives that we find an order to the chaos. GREAT NEWS!
Then, of course, All The Things Happened was selected for the 2019 Seven Devils Playwrights Conference.
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