Jay Eddy’s Digital Portfolio
from DRIVING IN CIRCLES (performer-composer / creator)
Driving in Circles is an evening-length work for solo performer (and live band—though it was performed totally solo at Edinburgh Fringe) traversing the highway between confessional monologue, stand-up comedy, and rock concert. Set to a sometimes whispering, sometimes screaming folktronica score, DRIVING traces the aftermath of intimate violence—mapping our hero’s darkly funny, deeply felt, defiantly hopeful journey through the bodymind-altering landscapes of trauma towards something like happiness. DRIVING interweaves live performance and video projection, live music and tracked sounds, present meaning-making and past remembrances, and putting the show together was an exploration in the collaborative re-authoring of stories of abuse as a means towards personal and communal healing.
Premiered at Boston Playwrights’ Theatre in spring 2024, The Boston Globe named DRIVING one of the top 10 Boston shows of 2024
WINNER: Richard Rodgers Award (American Academy of Arts and Letters)
WINNER: Elliot Norton Award for Outstanding Solo Performance (Boston Theater Critics Association)
WINNER: Jean Kennedy Smith & Musical Theatre Awards (Kennedy Center)
additional support from New England Foundation for the Arts, Connecticut Office of the Arts, New Jewish Culture Fellowship, Yaddo, New Harmony Project, Dragon’s Egg, Improv Acadia Presents
finalist for Best Musical at Edinburgh Fringe Festival
“2001” is a recording from the concept album of DRIVING. I am the performer and composer, as well as the producer on the track. This recording was completed in 2025.
Please note: this is the live performance score for the 2024 Boston production, and it does not correspond perfectly to the album recording (e.g. different time signature, different ending).
“The World Is Ending Anyway” is a recording from the concept album of DRIVING set to original hand-drawn animations. I am the performer and composer, as well as the producer on the track and animator on the video. This video and recording are from 2025.
Please note: this is the live performance score for the 2024 Boston production, and it does not correspond perfectly to the album recording.
“Aftershock” is the show’s opening number. This (imperfect, iPhone) recording was taken during a dress rehearsal for the Boston run. I am the lead performer in the video. This recording was taken in 2024.
For further context on the above work samples, the performance text is available to read HERE
Further context on DRIVING as practice-as-research: In its original conception, DRIVING was going to be a narrative concept album, but, as the story took shape, a monologue play sprouted in the cracks between songs. I wrote the performance text for DRIVING while pursuing an MFA in Playwriting at Boston University, I wrote the bulk of the music in residence at Yaddo the year before I went back to school, but the impulse and the attempt to tell this story goes back nearly ten years earlier, to my first master’s thesis for a degree in Music Theatre from The Royal Central School of Speech and Drama in London. I wrote my thesis (SEE EXCERPT UNDER RESEARCH BELOW) on Folk Opera with the intention of establishing a working definition of a genre that crosses geographical, cultural, and generational boundaries and therefore resists easy classification. I researched Folk Opera in the Tibetan Diaspora (Gyasa Bhelsa, Nangsa Woebum, Prince Norsang, Drimey Kundun), in Post-Colonial West Africa (Oba Kò So, Obaluaye, Obadzen, The Lost Fishermen), in Nationalist Hungary (Háry János), and in Depression & Recession Era USA (Porgy & Bess, The Martins & the Coys, Hadestown, The Gershwins’ Porgy & Bess). For the practical research component of my thesis, I wrote the first draft of my own Folk Opera, composed for a small ensemble of actor-musicians, BARE COVE: a darkish modern-day fairy tale about a New England family facing the history of violence in their home, BARE COVE invites us to explore the communities we share and the worlds we build for ourselves. Only a single piece of music carried over from BARE COVE to DRIVING IN CIRCLES, but the shared DNA between the two is akin to parent and child.
from ALLIGATOR-A-PHOBIA IN 3D! (composer / creator)
Alligator-a-Phobia in 3D! is an evening-length work and my MFA thesis from Boston University. I wrote the book, music, lyrics, and orchestrations, and music-directed and co-sound-designed my thesis production in 2023.
“My Swamp-land Home” is the show’s opening number. This is an in-progress demo recording; additional vocals provided by Sam Plattus, production and all remaining performance is my own work. This recording was made in 2024.
“An Alligator in the Wild / Songbird and the Alligator” is an in-progress demo recording; additional vocals provided by Sam Plattus, production and all remaining performance is my own work. This recording was made in 2024.
For further context on the above work samples, the performance text is available to read HERE, and I have included a small selection of production photos below.
Further context on ALLIGATOR-A-PHOBIA in my trajectory as a composer: My earliest musical training was in classical and jazz idioms, for both trombone and voice, but, as a composer and audio producer, I am largely self-taught, and my path has flowed through the acoustic New England folk idioms of BARE COVE through the varied folktronica sounds of DRIVING and the gritty electric swamp-rock vibes of ALLIGATOR-A-PHOBIA IN 3D! to the experimental, electronic ambient and art-pop aesthetics I’m moving towards now.
RESEARCH SAMPLE
I am including the opening chapters of my thesis for the MA in Music Theatre at The Royal Central School of Speech and Drama. READ HERE.
Date of submission: August 2012
Format: text-based research paper (~12,000 words) & composition of original opera
Because I completed my MA Thesis more than 10 years ago—and my MFA thesis, while it did include a research component, did not include a written research paper—I am including also a short article I wrote more recently towards the completion of my MFA degree. READ HERE.
Date of submission: December 2020
Format: text-based research paper (~4,000 words) & translation/adaptation of full-length play with original score. READ HERE.