Official Selection – Stages Festival Chicago 2007

A troupe of nihilistic European art film makers learns the true meaning of despair when their director discovers love and happiness. Despairadise will shake your faith in cynicism!

In 2005, I reached out to an old friend, Rich Prezioso, a renowned songwriter and performer on the national folk tour, to turn this loopy idea into a musical. Working through the Musical Theatre Writers Workshop at Theatre Building Chicago, under the direction of John Sparks, we slowly convinced our fellow workshoppers that this was more than a loopy idea and in fact a serious musical with a serious message. Even though it plays as hilarious fun almost start to finish. And even though the "serious" message is as simple as "What's so terrifying about happiness?"

After a successful staged reading in January, 2007, Despairadise was one of eight new musicals presented in the international Stages Festival in August. Where it goes from there is a chapter yet to be written.

Stay tuned!

Future Projects

Also in the works is a musical revue about middle-aged men and a certain blue pill. That show is appropriately entitled Flop! and should start working its way toward the footlights by the end of the year. I am writing lyrics and collaborating with best-selling satirist James Finn Garner on the book. Rich Prezioso is composing again, and Greg Kolack is directing.

My Dead Irish Mother is, as you would expect, about a young man and his dead Irish-American mother. It opens with a line stolen from the caption of one of my New Yorker cartoons. The mother, lying in her casket, looks over at her son kneeling by her side and says, "You couldn't put on a tie?" What follows is a bumpy ride to resting in peace.

Also in development are a country musical called Doublewide, and a potentially controversial (hopefully in a good way) piece called Pope Rose. More news about those as they develop.