New Musical! The Lucky Boy by Kirsten Childs, featuring Penn State Musical Theatre
January 12, 2019
Join us at Feinstein’s/54 Below for a concert event featuring highlights from the new musical The Lucky Boy – book, music, and lyrics by Kirsten Childs. This concert will be the first ever debut of scenes and songs from this new musical based on the Grimm’s fairy tale “The Devil with the Three Golden Hairs.” The Lucky Boy was commissioned by Penn State Musical Theatre and the concert features the talented seniors in the program.
Driven by a need to be eternally revered, King Ambrose tortures and kills any of his citizens who don’t proclaim him adorable. When it’s predicted that an illegal alien baby will grow up to surpass him in adorability, Ambrose finds the child and throws him into a nuclear waste bin. Rogue scientists, defunded by royal order, rescue the baby from the waste bin which contains heavy water bombarded by particles of adorabilium – their latest attempt to conquer nuclear toxicity in DNA cells. They name the baby Lucky, because he’s now not only immune to radiation poisoning, but he’s ten times more adorable than the king. Eighteen years pass and Lucky has fallen in love with Ambrose’s beautiful daughter Vocal Fry. Ambrose consents to the nauseatingly-in-love pair’s marriage – if Lucky can bring Ambrose three golden hairs from the devil’s head!
John Simpkins directs. Jennifer Peacock is Music Director.
Kirsten Childs is the award-winning writer of the musicals The Bubbly Black Girl Sheds Her Chameleon Skin, Miracle Brothers, Fly (with Rajiv Joseph and Bill Sherman), Funked Up Fairy Tales, and Bella: An American Tall Tale (directed by Robert O’Hara). Bella: An American Tall Tale received its world premiere in the 2016-2017 season at Dallas Theater Center, with a co-production at Playwrights Horizons, NYC. Bubbly Black Girl was recently produced at Theatre Royal Stratford East in the U.K. and at City Centers Encores! Off-Broadway. For her work Kirsten’s received Obie, Kleban, Larson, Richard Rodgers, Audelco, and Gilman/Gonzalez-Falla awards, as well as Lortel and Drama Desk nominations. She’s currently working on a commissioned project for The New Group with writer/director Gordon Greenberg. Kirsten has written for Disney Theatricals, the American Songbook series at Lincoln Center, the New Electric Company, City Center Encores!, Works and Process @ Guggenheim Museum, and Premieres/Inner Voices under the producership of Paulette Haupt, Artistic Director of the O’Neill National Music Theater Conference. She’s an adjunct professor in NYU’s Graduate Musical Theater Writing Program, and a member of the Dramatists Guild Council.
Penn State is the proud home of one of the preeminent training programs in musical theatre. Led by Head of Musical Theatre John Simpkins, it is also home to a New Musicals Initiative where each year writers are commissioned. The writing team visits to meet the BFA junior class, share work, and discuss timely issues. The writer(s) return the following year with a draft of a musical inspired in some way by those young artists who are now seniors. The team is partially in residence for a year developing and workshopping the musical together with the students and a creative team. Previous commissions in this program include Love in Hate Nation (Joe Iconis) and The Last Day (Mike Reid/ Sarah Schlesinger).
Starring:
Jack Bowman
Nick Case
Lauren Echausse
David Friedman
Katie Griffith
Graham Hancock
Kamryn Harris
Jonathan Hashmonay
Julio Reinaldo
MiKayla McKasy
Lena Skeele
Please note that all artists and acts are subject to change at anytime.
