MUSICALS
The Mistress Cycle
Book and Lyrics – Beth Blatt
Music – Jenny Giering
Tess, a photographer living in New York, is made an offer by a wealthy, older man to keep her as his mistress. What will she do? “Mistress: no male equivalent.”
Winner of the Director’s Choice Award at the New York Musical Festival. View More Here.
Island of the Blue Dolphins
Book and Lyrics – Beth Blatt
Music – Jenny Giering
Commissioned by Theatreworks USA. Based on the beloved book by Scott O’Dell. Toured the US, becoming a best-selling show on the West Coast, where the story takes place.
Karana, a 12-year-old Native American girl, becomes stranded alone for years on an island off the coast of California. The story of how she learns to survive.
Oneida
Book and Lyrics – Beth Blatt
Music – Lizzie Hagstedt
Commissioned by the Village Theatre (Issaquah, WA). Presented at their Festival of New Musicals. Awarded the X Award (Pallas Theatre, Washington DC). Received a grant from NAMT (National Association of Musical Theatre). Developed at Vox Fest (Hanover, NH), and the Music Theatre of Connecticut.
The Oneida Community was front-page news in the 1800’s - they coined the expression “free love” and dared to adopt one of the most revolutionary practices imaginable – yet today, the only thing most people know about them is the silverware they made. In this Bible Communist utopia, 300 souls happily lived and loved under one roof for almost 30 years. Until forces from the outside world and from within the community - from within the human heart itself - brought it crashing down.
Princess Caraboo
Book – Marsha Norman
Music – Jenny Giering
Lyrics – Beth Blatt
Presented at NAMT’s Festival of New Musicals, Goodspeed Musicals (East Haddam CT) and Juilliard.
Based on the true story of a woman who perpetrates one of the strangest hoaxes of all time. A woman, disheveled and distraught, is discovered in a field near Bristol, England and somehow everyone comes to believe she is a princess from the mysterious land of Javasu. Until they discover she is Mary Baker from two towns over.
Hashi
Book – Beth Blatt
Songs – Jeff Blumenkrantz
Developed at Sundance (UCross) and Goodspeed Musicals.
Hashi, loosely based on Pollyanna, tells the story of Barb, a hard-boiled, 40-ish, unmarried executive happily (read: crabbily) living in New York City - until Hashi (a boy she never knew about, the son of her feckless and free-spirited sister who up and dies) lands on her doorstep.
My Mother’s Jewelry – A Song Cycle
About all the things we inherit.
At The Met
Book and Lyrics – Beth Blatt
Music – Jenny Giering
Susan returns to New York from Tokyo – with neither her boyfriend nor a sense of direction. She quits her high-profile job and decides to become a painter.
The Vanderbilt Women
Book and Lyrics - Beth Blatt
Music - Jeffrey Stock and Beth Blatt
Gender, class and power at the end of the Golden Age in five interlocking short musicals. Two sisters-in-law - renegade Alva and conformist Alice - and their daughters dance around each other and their changing times.
PLAYS
Smotherhood (a play with music)
Dea has a new baby and a new career. Neither is going well.
Developed at Music Theatre of Connecticut.
On Its Chimney (a short play)
At the height of the Gilded Age, wealthy and powerful Alva Vanderbilt takes on Richard Morris Hunt, the most famous American architect of the day to get what she wants.
Take It Down (a ten-minute play)
It’s Rosie's 60th birthday. And she doesn’t want anyone to know. Her friend Annie doesn't get it.
Selected for the Catherine Lindsey Playwrights Workshop.
Strings (a ten-minute play)
70-year-old Ruth and 30 year-old Cort share a coffee – and much more.
In Her Words (75 minutes, partially devised theatre)
“In Her Words” is drawn from interviews with refugee women who came to the US from Rwanda, Myanmar, Honduras, Syria, the Gambia and Kazakhstan. It also gives voice to the Americans who have trouble embracing them, encouraging the audience to look at their own fears.