portfolio

One Year of Sonnets

My resolution for 2018: to write 365 sonnets by the end of the year. 

ALL THE BOYS

ALL THE BOYS is a collection of 14 songs about growing up and into your 20s: the intoxication and drama of young love; the fear of getting stuck in your home town; the paralyzing effects of depression; and the longing to be happy.

The Boys Are Angry

The Boys are Angry follows three 20-something millennials as they wrestle with on- and offline communication; present-day American masculinity; and the violent hatred of women at the dark heart of the Internet.

The Girl from Bare Cove

An original folk opera written for an ensemble of actor-musicians, The Girl From Bare Cove follows a family in crisis as they face the revelation of one daughter’s decade-long history of sexual abuse and the present-day consequences of her traumatic past. With songs inspired by the folk sounds of New England and a story rooted in the ghostly traditions and fairy tales of that place, this modern-day fable invites us to explore the communities we share and the worlds we build for ourselves.

Holler, Beached, Block: The Tragedies

A triptych of loose, looser, and looser still adaptations of Macbeth, King Lear, and Hamlet: to be performed together or to not. Holler, an Appalachian Tragedy is a punishing fairy tale set in the Appalachia of the American imagination. Through the banjo-picking, bass-thumping, mandolin-trilling, guitar-strumming, fiddle-shrieking ballads that have echoed through the mountains for centuries, Holler asks: how far would you go to leave your mark on the world? and what happens when you can't turn back? Beached, an Island Tragedy is set on a tiny island in Downeast Maine—the kind of island you can only reach by mailboat. Set to a rollicking score of shanties old and new, Beached is the story of one man's legacy and the children who must inherit it. Block, a Neighborhood Tragedy is a klezmer-driven meditation on faith and death, following of an off-the-derech Hasid and the dybukk who haunts him.

devil fish

A seaside sideshow with sounds inspired by fisherman shanties, Barnum and Bailey, and burlesque clubs, devil fish is an exhibition of biological rarities and mundane regularities, asking: what makes us human?

28

28 is a rock show about doomed love, suicide, and selling your soul to the devil.

Jackie and Johnny's Friday Night Fright Show

Jackie and Johnny’s Friday Night Fright Show turns theater, film, and live music into a singular exploration of love and violence, a celebration of camp and horror, and a boy-girl story fit for a 1950s drive-in.