As a contemporary Bay Area multiracial family deals with growing pains, its matriarch recalls growing up in Selma, Alabama, at the height of the turbulent civil rights movement and reveals a family secret that will change everything. The new, contemporary musical score will incorporate select gospel/folk standards from the 1960s.

 

 

 

What: Reading of Bridges
Where: Julia Morgan Theater
When: May10 or 11
Time: 7pm 

 

 

 

 

Douglas is the composer/lyricist of the Broadway bound The Big Time, an original musical with a book by Douglas Carter Beane, directed by Chris Ashley, and produced by Robert Ahrens. He was awarded two Richard Rodgers  and the Gilman & Gonzalez-Falla Theatre Foundation Award for writing No Way to Treat a Lady(optioned for Broadway and previously produced twice off-Broadway at the Hudson Guild and York Theatre Co., upcoming Colony Theatre production in L.A.) and The Gig (MTC Stage II, Good speed, California Musical Theatre, York Theatre Company concert now on Jay Records CD). Nominated for a 2005 Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Lyrics for Children’s Letters to God (off-Broadway’s Lamb’s Theatre), Doug is composer/lyricist/co-librettist for The Opposite of Sex (Williamstown Theatre Festival, MagicTheatre), composer of Barnstormer(2008 NAMT Festival,  Stage Company Brand: New Festival, Lark Play Development Center Bare Bones production, Village Theatre workshop, upcoming Alabama Shakespeare Festival reading in May, 2009 and production at Red Mountain Theatre in 2010), Glimmerglass (Good speed, NAMT Festival, Spirit of Broadway production – voted Best New Work and Best Production of the Year),librettist-lyricist of the upcoming Valentino’s Tango, and composer-lyricist of off-Broadway’s Boozy, created by the Obie award-winning Les Freres Corbusier. For Theatre works/USA, Douglas wrote the music for A Charles Dickens Christmas (licensed through MTI) and Columbus.

 

 

 

Cheryl is aco-recipient of the Kleban Award for her work as a librettist, and her musical Barnstormer, written with award-winning composer Douglas J. Cohen, received a Jonathan Larson Performing Arts Foundation Award, under the auspices of the Lark  Development Center. Her play about the desegregation of the nations’ school system, The Color of , which was commissioned by Theatreworks/USA, received critical acclaim, including excellent reviews in the  and Daily News, and tours regularly. Her play Cover Girls, which is an adaptation of the Bishop T. D.Jakes novel, was produced and toured by Clear Channel Entertainment. She is the recipient of a commission from the Ensemble Studio Theatre/Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Science and Technology Project. Her work has been read and performed nationally, including at the Cleveland Play House, the Actors Theatre of Louisville, and the Kennedy Center.

 

 

 

Elizabeth McKoy, Director

 

Elizabeth is in her5th season as Artistic Director at The Berkeley Playhouse, which grew from the youth company The Imagination Players ten years ago. Her directing credits include Peter Pan, Cinderella Enchanted, Willy Wonka and The Sound of Music for the main stage, as well as over 40 youth stage productions. She served as the Education Director of the Lincoln Center Institute for arts education at the Julia Morgan Center for the Arts, and served on the faculty at the Seattle Children’s Theatre for 5years. She has commissioned and spearheaded the new musicals Bravado and the critically acclaimed Born and Raised. She has been a Teaching Artist for many Bay Area school outreach programs, as well as having created curriculum and provided professional development programs for CalShakes, SFMOMA, and the SF Opera.

 

 

 

 

Ken is a dramaturg, writer and director. In addition to co-founding Two Turns Theatre Company in 2009 and producing The Turn of the Screw in a haunted house museum, recent projects include working with Seattle’s Fisher Ensemble to create Psyche, a multimedia chamber opera, and with American Records Theatre Company on Reentry, a documentary play about U.S. Marines and their families. By day he is dramaturg and literary manager for Disney Theatrical Group, where he has developed over forty shows for professional, amateur and school productions, including High School Musical, The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast Jr.,Camp Rock, and Peter and the Star catcher, a prequel to Peter Pan that won five Tony Awards. Ken holds a Ph.D. in theatre history and criticism from the University of Washington and presents and publishes his research internationally.

 

 

 

 

Vernon is a singer/songwriter, musician and recording artist, who worked with Whitney Houston and jazz legendand song stylist, Nancy Wilson. With his groups, (“The Vernon Bush Group” and“VSOUL”), he has opened for artists as Gladys Knight, Stanley Jordan, Mickey Hart, and Michael Franti & Spearhead and has toured all over Europe. He is also a featured vocalist with the Glide Ensemble Choir at the world-renowned Glide Memorial Church in San Francisco (as seen in movie, The Pursuit of Happiness) as well as musical director of The Immaculate Conception Academy Choir, Glide Tots Choir and former musical director of the Glide Teen Choir (GTC) and is by far, one of the hardest working artists in the Bay Area. A passionate singer as well as a consummate voice teacher and coach, Vernon has taught privately in New York, Los Angeles, London, Holland, France, South Africa as well as San Francisco and teaches his popular “Reclaim Your Voice” workshops in voice and speech production.