DANIEL JOHN KELLEY

Oh it is has been far too long, blog reader. That’s you. You know who you are.

The reason I’ve been so absent is I’ve been working on putting on the reading of my musical Plagued or How to Escape Persecution at the Hands of an Angry Mob. And it happened! This past Monday, we put up the whole monster, to hear it out loud in full for the first time. We had two weeks of rehearsals, a fantastic cast, space and music director- and it went swimmingly! Here are some pics:

Above, Jennifer Blood and Kurt Robbins as our heroine and hero, Sarah the Maid and Manny the Rascal.

Bruce Sabath as the villain, Mayor Reginald Moon.

The full cast!

The next step for Plagued is another even more elaborate reading in November, once we’ve revised it based on feedback we got from this time around. This time we’ll be on Theatre Row, and it promises to be fancy AND epic. If you missed it this time around, it will return even more powerful than before in November, so come check it out.

If that’s not enough, coming up next I’m starting to work on developing a new musical with the folks behind the In Transit, a fully a capella musical about being young in NYC. I saw a reading of it a bit ago at the York Theatre, and it has hilarious, touching and immensely true to the experience of being young in NYC. They’ve been working on it for a while (i’m talking years), and there’s some good news in the pipeline for these folks, which is exciting!

The musical I’m developing with these folks, to give credit where credit is due, came from a story I found on James Comtois’ blog almost a year ago now, about a woman who gave birth young- and when her child was about to enter into high school- decided to dress as her child and go to high school in her stead. We’re in the beginning stages of creating a sort of rock/new wave musical about this story, and we’re amped for it to be born.

And good lord almighty, if that wasn’t enough musicals- because that seems to be where I’m at right now- I’m starting to work with my long time friend Maggie Levin (from the old YPI days) on a rock musical, this time based around some stories in the Brother’s Grimm. This one is in an even more formative stage than the others, but soon will gestate into a truly horrifying monster of a show.

And somewhere in all this I’ll find some time to work a massive epic about the gentrification of Brooklyn that I’ve had the gears turning about for a while. But more on that later. For now, I’m off to host a podcast on Independent Opera companies in NYC. I’ll post that, once it’s done. Until then!