NATE THE GREAT to Premiere at First Stage

Milwaukee’s premiere children’s theatre, First Stage, announced today that ‘Nate the Great’ will open it’s 2018/19 Season! The musical features book & lyrics by John Maclay and music & lyrics by yours truly.

This world premiere adaptation of Marjorie Weinman Sharmat’s novel about an elementary school detective will play from October 12 – November 11th at the Todd Wehr Theatre.

Join just detective Nate the Great on his new case. His friend Annie has just painted a picture, and now it’s gone missing! Armed with an appetite for justice and for pancakes, Nate vows to solve this baffling elementary school mystery.

Tickets and more information available here.

Michael Jackson Lives

In a recent post about Race and the New Generation of Musical Theatre, I gave a shout out to Michael R. Jackson, a musical theatre composer/lyricist whose work I recently came to know, and who was telling stories about people of color in a way I’d never seen before.

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I had originally heard of Michael when I saw a song from his largely autobiographical musical A Strange Loop performed as part of William Finn’s Ridiculously Talented Composers and Lyricists You’ve Probably Never Heard of But Should cabaret at 54 Below. (Well – truth be told I think I originally originally heard of him when the pop-star Michael Jackson died, and he was forced to distinguish himself on Facebook as Michael “Living” Jackson, but that’s neither here nor there.)

I then got to meet him as we were both participants of the Johnny Mercer Writers Colony at the Goodspeed Musical Theatre this past January. There I got to see more of his work on the show come to life.

A Strange Loop is, how shall I put it…graphic. Continue reading Michael Jackson Lives

The Most Underutilized Resource in Theater

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PC: Caitlin McNaney

Rajiv Joseph is one of my favorite contemporary playwrights. I remember seeing his play A Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo in Los Angeles and being blown away. It was political, yet personal. Surreal, yet plainspoken. It captured a place and a wonderment that I seek to find in my own writing.

In this Broadway.com interview on the occasion of his latest play Guards at the Taj, he describes a lesson he learned about collaboration: Continue reading The Most Underutilized Resource in Theater