New York Theatre Barn will host a free live stream of its New Works Series on Wednesday, July 8th, 2020 at 7PM EDT, featuring excerpts from the new musicals Francois and the Rebels and American Morning. The 40-minute presentation will also feature a conversation with the creators of the new musicals.
The new musical American Morning has book, music and lyrics by Timothy Huang (The View From Up Here). Inspired by an article from the 2009 New York Times, American Morning tells the story of two immigrant cab drivers who share opposite shifts off the same medallion. The two men’s fates become intertwined as forced competition drives a wedge between them that culminates in a single desperate act that leaves one dead and the other brutalized. Featuring live performances performed remotely by Cathy Ang (KPOP, We Are The Tigers), Marc delaCruz (Hamilton, If/Then), and Raymond J. Lee (Soft Power, Groundhog Day).
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With book, music, and lyrics by Jaime Cepero (“Smash”), Francois and the Rebels is a punk rock telling of the 1791 Haitian Revolution. With a pulsing punk rock score, and a story pulled from historic events full of love, loss, and deception, Francois and the Rebels tells an important and often forgotten black history through the lens of an immersive high energy rock and roll experience. Featuring live performances performed remotely by L Morgan Lee (A Strange Loop), and Alex Lugo (Rent, Godspell).
Francois and the Rebels was featured in Musical Theatre Factory’s 4X15 and in Joe’s Pub New Works concert program. American Morning has been featured or developed in the ASCAP Musical Theatre Workshop, New York Theatre Barn, The Village Theater’s Festival of New Musicals in Seattle, NAMT’s Festival of New Musicals, Playwrights Horizons after winning the Richard Rodgers Award for Staged Readings (making its author the first and only Asian-American to win the award as a triple-threat composer/lyricist/librettist), Prospect Theater Company, received the New American Musical Award through B-Side Productions, and just released a studio cast album featuring Arielle Jacobs, Will Roland, Raymond J. Lee, Thom Sesma and more.
The 40-minute presentation will be available on New York Theatre Barn’s YouTube channel, and is hosted and produced by Jen Sandler and Joe Barros. The company will be giving 50% of its donations each week to a different charity that supports black lives and civil rights. The charity on July 1st will be The Okra Project, a collective that seeks to address the global crisis faced by Black Trans people by bringing home cooked, healthy, and culturally specific meals and resources to Black Trans People wherever we can reach them. For more information, visit New York Theatre Barn’s website: www.nytheatrebarn.org.
Lia Chang is an actor, a multi-media content producer and co-founder of Bev’s Girl Films, making films that foster inclusion and diversity on both sides of the camera. Bev’s Girl Films’ debut short film, Hide and Seek was a top ten film in the Asian American Film Lab’s 2015 72 Hour Shootout Filmmaking Competition, and she received a Best Actress nomination. BGF collaborates with and produces multi-media content for artists, actors, designers, theatrical productions, composers, musicians and corporations. Lia has appeared in the films Wolf, New Jack City, A Kiss Before Dying, King of New York, Big Trouble in Little China, The Last Dragon, Taxman. She stars in and served as Executive Producer for the short independent films Hide and Seek, Balancing Act, Rom-Com Gone Wrong, Belongingness and When the World was Young. She is also the Executive Producer for The Cactus, The Language Lesson, The Writer and Cream and 2 Shugahs.
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