EllaRose Chary

T and L drive their convertible off the edge of a cliff and into a fantasy-driven, irreverent, queer, rock musical – TL;DR: Thelma Louise; Dyke Remix where strong female characters don’t “always gotta die.” With full-on Riot Grrl aplomb, the Kickass Band helps T and L find the queer happy ending they deserve.

When a rupture over identity politics strikes the Lakeland Ladies+ softball league, will its members—primarily white queer women—survive the implosion? GOOD GAME explores the spiraling crisis that consumes a rec league when its members discover their views of conflict resolution and restorative justice are trickier to align than binary thinking might suggest.

This new play with movement operates in three types of performative space:

The Bar: these scenes where the characters socialize exist in the traditional world of naturalistic, new plays. Fast dialogue, clear characters, comedy, and a 4th wall.

The League Meetings: these scenes break the 4th wall and include the audience as participants in the meeting.

The Softball Field - these are movement based sequences fueled by lesbian pop music that use highly stylized lyrical text.

As the play progresses, these spaces collapse in on themselves as the play begins to mirror how the conflict becomes headache-inducingly circular. GOOD GAME asks: should people who do racist things be excommunicated from voluntary communities? If they are allowed to stay in the community, what are the rules and circumstances of that return that allow the people who have been hurt to feel safe in the community? And who gets to decide whether the offense is “forgivable” or not?

THE SPELL OF RED RIVER is an intergenerational-witch-story about family, grief, and finding your magic. Stylistically, it’s Fried Green Tomatoes meets The Divine Secrets of the Ya-ya Sisterhood meets Practical Magic. It has a contemporary musical theatre/pop-country score with artistic influences such as Taylor Swift, The Chicks, and Tammy Wynette.

Vel is a witch who has an unique aptitude for psychometry - the ability to conjure memories about an event or person by touching inanimate objects associated with them. When she inherits a mysterious school building in her recently deceased mother’s hometown of Canonsboro, TN, she goes searching for the answers to questions about her family history that her mother took to the grave.

Lita (white, queer, not religious) and Vashti (black, straight, practicing) are best friends, organizing for progressive change at the Jewish Values Justice League. When a series of anti-Semitic incidents happen at a wealthy, predominately white, Ashkenazi, Jewish community center and synagogue in a gentrifying low-income black neighborhood, Lita and Vashti learn things about themselves and each other that change their friendship forever.

THE THINGS I DON’T SAY is a musical revue about identity and relationships. It explores the things we don’t say, the things we do say, and the things we ought to say – to ourselves and to others. Our version of this type of show subverts the genre; typically this type of song forward, imagistic, contemporary musical is reserved for cis, white, upper middle class, able bodied, mostly straight people. Our show is populated with an intersectional, inclusive cast. We allow for the specificity of experience without centering the trauma of marginalization. Instead, we allow folks of all backgrounds to ask big questions, be young, grow up, and center the joys and challenges of living in a wide world.

A few months before her Bat Mitzvah, Zip learns that her softball team is losing their field next season while the boys get new equipment and uniforms. She finds this deeply unfair. With help of her two best friends and the fantasy version of her hero - Rockstar RBG (Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg) - she takes her fight for equality to the school board. When she loses, Rockstar RBG teaches her that dissents are just as important as decisions and Zip adjusts her D’Var Torah (Bat Mitzvah speech) to make her voice heard.

Once upon a time there was a Lake (Michigan) and a Mill (U.S. Steel) and they had a beautiful City (Gary, Indiana) and everything was wonderful - until it wasn't. THE LAKE AND THE MILL weaves three narrative forms (folktale, investigation, and heightened naturalism) to explore the fate of the American rust belt through the lens of a divorce that splinters a family. But when The City realizes that this might not be her story, it becomes clear that her former babysitter Allie, who came North during the Great Migration, is the one who is truly left to pick up the pieces.

Book and Lyrics by EllaRose Chary
Music and Lyrics by Brandon James Gwinn

COTTON CANDY AND COCAINE (CC &C) is an immersive electro-pop musical experience. It explores the effects of gentrification on the citizens of Main Street Las Vegas. A community of working people -costumed characters, waitstaff, street entertainers - faces off with a wealthy tech entrepreneur, Tad Park, who is building sleek condos downtown. As Tad tries to placate union protestors on his construction site, the story hurdles towards a confrontation that will change Main Street forever. Inside the party atmosphere, the audience becomes complicit in the challenges of those struggling to survive in a world of imminent personal economic collapse.

Book and Lyrics by EllaRose Chary
Music and Lyrics by Brandon James Gwinn

QUEER. PEOPLE. TIME. (QPT) is a time-travelling romance that tracks the evolution of queer community in the United States over the last 100 years. The show features a contemporary theater score rooted in American music found in queer spaces from the 1920s to the 2020s.

It’s a 5 person ensemble, pop chamber musical about Nelly's, a queer bar and the family formed within. On a night when ex-lovers collide, the fabric of time rips and Nelly's takes its children on a trip through the past, testing and prodding their relationships, through different possibilities of themselves - reminding them why they are one as they step into a questionable future.

The show asks how do we find common ground across race, gender and socioeconomic lines? How do we find joy in a world where one day “it gets better” and the next day Proud Boys rip down our rainbow flags? In this stylish, modern musical “sometimes it’s a party and sometimes it’s a raid, but at Nelly’s, we’re drinking either way.”

Do you believe in time travel? Do you believe in ghosts? Do you believe in... science?
What if you could listen to the voices of the past as easily as you listen to your favorite podcast? You can in this unique theatrical demonstration - the unveiling of visionary scientist Dr. Carolyn Blau's Mechanical Wave Reassembly Hypercardioid Sequencing Module. The Seance Machine is an hour long, interactive theatrical experience. Our audience of scientific “colleagues” is invited to observe and participate in the first demonstration of an exciting new tool. A brilliant piece of machinery and engineering destined to revolutionize the study of the physics of sound and push the boundaries of the world we inhabit. The show features a unique soundscape to create the immersive, horror landscape. The play was part of the Tank's 2019-2020 Obie Award winning season.

Book by EllaRose Chary and Fran Sillau
Music by Brian Feinstein
Lyrics by Sammy Buck
Based on The Doll Maker’s Gift by Sashi Fridman

Welcome to Zalushka’s Doll Shop, an imaginarium where even the darkest times can give way to hope.

Set in a small village in Eastern Europe during the early 1900s, The Doll Maker’s Gift follows Nora, an irrepressibly creative little girl whose dolls guide and uplift her when the ethnic cleansing of Pogroms threaten her Jewish community in Russia.

After their cousins’ village is attacked, Nora’s family is forced to flee to America. They discover at the last moment that they don’t have enough funds to pay for everyone’s passage. Young Nora will have to stay behind, with the threat of attacks ever increasing. She is left with a family friend, a kind doll maker who offers to care for her until they can earn enough money to pay for her journey to America. Together, with her ingenuity and his know-how, they hatch a plan to reunite Nora with her family.

Featuring beautiful original music and an essential story drawn right from history, The Doll Maker’s Gift is an uplifting exploration of the power of kindness in the face of adversity.

Nora Ephron’s Ghost is trapped in the lady art lady box...will a multiracial, gender non-conforming love story free her? This short play was written for the Tank's Rule of 7x7: Lady Edition! in August 2018. Originally directed by Taylor Reynolds and performed by Sagan Chen, Vanessa Robinson and Anne Troup.

This 10-Minute play was written for the Tank's Rule of 7x7: Lady Edition! in August 2016. Originally directed by Laura Brandel and performed by Joanna Carpenter, Monica Diaz and Allison Posner. It's a comedic, pop-culture filled, feminist rant for 3 voices trying to figure out their lady parts. It operates in a "feminine / feminist" structure as opposed to an Aristotelian "masculine" structure.