Amy Engelhardt

I don't like most one-person shows. And I live in the smart/funny artistically. And I don't go for woowoo stuff. I mean HELLO, I'm from New Jersey. But in 2019, a series of "follow-signs" appeared about a major world event I was adjacent to 30 years ago. I followed these prompts to Scotland. And what started out as a bucket list trip turned into an exploration of compassion, grief, kindness, and community. With some Satanic nuns thrown in for good measure.

[Full-length musical, 12 women, + optional additional ensemble]
2025 workshop & readings, University of Minnesota/Duluth Theatre Department
2024 finalist for the Edward Kleban Libretto Award
2024 finalist for Musical Theatre West New Works Reading Festival, Long Beach CA
2024 finalist for TRU/Streaming Musicals reading series NYC
2023 Semi-finalist, Eugene O'Neill Musical Theatre Conference
2023 Semi-finalist, Normal Avenue NAPSeries, NYC

(To listen to the demos: link on this page, under "Music Samples" in the column on the right.)

A COLLECTIBLE SENSATION is a musical adaptation of the full-length play THE EQUIVALENT OF SENSATION by Arianna Rose.

At the unveiling of the million-dollar renovation of their renowned Cone Collection at the Baltimore Museum of Modern Art, long dead sisters Etta and Claribel Cone suddenly materialize. "Family friend" Gertrude Stein and her paramour Alice Toklas (equally dead) also pop up, uninvited (much to Etta’s dismay). Their mission: to settle once and for all how the “Friendship” between Etta and Gertrude fell apart. Their younger selves appear to help them sort it all out. The surrounding artwork miraculously comes to life, with each woman represented by a painting with special significance for them. Etta struggles with her feelings for Gertrude and her modern proclivities, at direct odds with her Victorian mores. Through a series of evocative vignettes, we are transported back to Baltimore, Paris and Italy at the turn of the century to learn what derailed the relationship (and suspected affair) and how Gertrude and Alice came to be a couple. The musical is non-linear, moving between present time in the Cone Wing, past memories with the younger selves of the four women, with artwork that also represents the women that comes alive to comment on and move the story forward. Fantasy sequences are created when past and present merge. At its heart, A COLLECTIBLE SENSATION is about learning valuable, timeless lessons of love, and covert and overt feminism in a time when women were expected to be heterosexual homemakers.

Featuring a cast of twelve women of any race and ethnicity, the score is written for a modern rhythm section (pop/rock) with strings for a more chamber-like, period feel.

Book/lyrics by Marc Acito
Music/lyrics by Amy Engelhardt

A rock musical comedy adaptation of Henry Fielding's classic Brit Lit satire from 1749, THE HISTORY OF TOM JONES, A FOUNDLING

In a rollicking adventure of deception, misunderstanding and… bedhopping, charming but low-born Tom Jones makes the mistake of wooing Sophia Shepherd, daughter of the pompous Reverend Shepherd. Shepherd conspires to have Tom banished from the only home he’s known.

Although determined to make good to earn Sophia's love, Tom's knack for trouble leads to conscription in the army, halfnaked havoc at a country inn and a stint as the boytoy of the duplicitous Lady Bellaston.

Secrets, lies and still more bed-hopping eventually lead Tom to the brink of the scaffold before order and happiness prevail.

Summer 1882, Exeter, Rhode Island, in a clearing between forest groves. A harvest moon hangs low in the east. A plague has swept through rural New England. People are desperate for answers. So desperate, they'll try anything.