Oratorio; music by Will Todd

Cast: Virtuoso actor; four-part choir; orchestra (piano, bass, accordion)
Designed as a theatrical oratorio for orchestra, virtuoso actor/actress and four-part choir, Dickens’ A Christmas Carol is intended for both theatrical and/or choral presentations. The 70 minute adaptation, told by Christmas carolers, can be done simply with a lectern and music stands, or can be opened up to accommodate the needs and creativity of the individual productions.

Oscar Wilde, unpublished at only 27 years old, had an eye for the boys and ‘nothing to declare but his genius.’

Walt Whitman, penniless at 62, looked 72, and was banned in Boston for his ‘pornographic’ homoerotic poetry.

January 18, 1882 - On this fateful day these two literary giants spent three hours together behind closed doors in Whitman’s home in Camden, New Jersey. Walt faces an auspicious deadline: He must cut his best 25 poems from Leaves of Grass, or his work will be criminalized and banned forever. Oscar, who came looking for approbation from his idol, fervently dedicates himself to saving his hero's poetic legacy. Will Oscar convince Walt to stay true to his vision and share it with the world, or will Walt sacrifice his best poems, and lose his pivotal role in literary history?

This play is equal parts historical record and theatrical conjecture, of what they said, and did, behind those closed doors.

CRUEL SHOES, the whacked out backstage musical satire, is the story of Glen Bob, a fresh-faced country boy in the Big Apple chasing his dream to be a Broadway Star. Glen Bob climbs the show-biz ladder of success, rung by bloody rung, driven by his multiple homicidal-trans-gender split personalities who murder the men standing in his way. CRUEL SHOES is a backstage-slasher-musical-mystery-comedy about a triple-threat, serial killer Broadway star.

MACS examines the story of an Italian-American family's denial around the death of the youngest son, told through a solid mix of laughter, tears and rigatoni. Through the course of a Sunday dinner, the suppressed family dynamics build to a head and explode during a furious word association "exorcism", which forces the family to come together, accept the tragic death, and ultimately, embrace life and each other.

A Father visits a powerful psychic in order to call his gay-bashed son back from the dead
to deal with unfinished business. With a structure inspired by Dickens’ A CHRISTMAS
CAROL, this play uses liberal doses of magic realism to explore one man’s journey as he
chooses between what he’s been taught, and what he truly wants: to love his son.

PEOPLE PEOPLE: NYC, 1992: Eight waiters in a trendy restaurant cash out and lash out as tally up their tips at the end of a very long night. Liquor is consumed, drugs are inhaled, lines are drawn and alliances shift and turn at the expense of the waiter’s toxic humanity. Decaffe coffee and a fight to the death highlight this savage, 60-minute, comedy of manners.

A collection of monologues examining six thematically connected characters as they take tiny, momentous steps forward in their lives.

Irene: An ex-junkie gourmet deli owner meets her old best friend and searches for the secret of life. (Published in One-on-One: The Best Women’s Monologues for the 21st Century; Applause Books, 2007)
Carla: A self-help fitness guru pitches her unique diet plan, ‘Shit or Get Off the Pot’
Robert: A painfully shy man engages in a sexual relationship with a woman with the help of binoculars.
Cherry Bomb: A stripper memorizes Lady Macbeth’s speech for an upcoming audition and weighs the balance of her existence while tantalizing her audience.
Bess: An abandoned mother of two contemplates her life in the midst of aborting a third child.
Sterling: An ‘over it’ gay man waits for his Prince Charming in a blowjob parlor.

LIFEafterLIFE is a two-act musical/opera/drama hybrid, exploring the lives of two individual, but tragically connected, characters, one in each act, backed by a four-piece band. The two solo musical-dramas examine the heartbreak of loss, the obsessive burden of guilt, the anger of grief, and the essential hope that enables us to rise up from the depths of unbearable tragedy. While drenched in death and loss, with occasional, unquenchable pools of humor, LIFEafterLIFE ultimately celebrates life, and the human capacity to change.

Act One, Virtuality Sal, looks at the broken life of a former bus driver recovering from the trauma of accidently running down and killing a pedestrian, funneled through the musical lens of electronic/punk pop (accompanied by an all female (at least in appearance) trio of musicians.) His mindless, work-at-home job keeps him focused in the computer, as do the online games he plays during the slow periods; yet each moment is filled with the blood-soaked memories of the bus accident. Eaten away by the guilt he cannot bear, Sal chooses a life that is virtual, rather than literal, finding his solace in the avatar that allows him to function via a second life within the computer. By the end of the act, Sal is a shell of himself, locked behind his door, bathed in the glow of his computer as he finds a virtual happiness in a different world.

Act Two, Whida Peru, explores the plight of Whida Peru, a Puerto Rican transsexual shut-in agoraphobic psychic, as she is forced to break up with the ghost of her dead boyfriend and rejoin the world on the other side of the door. Juannie, the dead boyfriend, was accidentally run over by a city bus, driven by Sal, on the morning of Whida’s reassignment surgery; Whida has been shut in the apartment ever since, supporting herself as the most powerful psychic on the Eastern seaboard. Whida manifests all the invisible ghosts that fill her tiny life, but is not ready for the big change that greets her this night: Juannie wants to break up. Whida rages through the five stages of accepting death, and with the help of the ethereal spirit of her dead lover, and the physically omnipresent Pianist (apparently male, providing both the musical accompaniment and soundscape vocalizations of the score), along with a trio of paranormal, poltergeistic sisters (the musicians from Virtuality Sal, who now migrate over to manipulate Whida's environment as if from the beyond), she finally unlocks the front door, ready to step back out into the land of the living.

Together, Virtuality Sal and Whida Peru take us on a journey that retreats from the pain and brutal realities of the real world, yet allows us to find a way out at the end of the long, sheltering tunnel. Ultimately, LIFEafterLIFE celebrates the journeys of two people connected by the same tragedy: one shutting the door on the world, the other, finally opening it to start her life again.

THE SCREAMS OF KITTY GENOVESE
A Thrilling New Rock Opera by
David Simpatico and Will Todd

New York City, 1964: Kitty Genovese is brutally attacked on the steps of her apartment building while thirty-eight of her neighbors watch and/or listen – yet no one helps, no one calls the police. Inspired by the true story that shocked the nation, British composer Will Todd and American writer David Simpatico slice through the silence of a city stricken with fear in the musical drama The Screams of Kitty Genovese. The New York Times says, “hold the hand-wringing over the precipitous decline of the American musical theater, please.” Keep your eyes and ears open – The Screams of Kitty Genovese will have you on the edge of your seat.

This is the demo recording we cut in Edinburgh in 2010 at the Fringe Festival; David Edwards directed the production, which featured Sarah Applewood, Darren Charles, Steve Devereaux, Ben Dunwell, Robert Irons, Waylon Jacobs, Claire Platt, Jessica Ridley, Caroline Sabiston, Susie Self, Bradley White-Dale, Sophie Tehrani. The production was produced by Staci Levine and Michael Nassar.

Religious freedom vs. Civil Rights, as a Pastafarian mobile chef refuses service to a gay Christian couple, fanning a national firestorm of political controversy

Two alcoholic ghosts spend every Halloween sitting in the same bar, parched for a drink they can never have, reminiscing about their toxic past.

A couple celebrating the fullness of their empty lives on their 18th anniversary, debates bringing a child into our current world.

While Kevin, a fag-bashing garbage man, anxiously awaits the results of his HIV test at his doctor's office, he engages in a fierce polemic battle with his streetwise savior, Jesus Christ.

A mismatched dance team prepare for a nationally televised talent competition.

Two heterosexual men abduct a drag queen and subject her to conversion therapy. The tables are turned, however, when the shoe gets put on the other foot, and that shoe is a three inch high heel.

Two couples fight over paying the bill after a night out.

A scribe and a censor revise recent world history for kindergarten textbooks, controlling the future by rewriting the past. A chilling blast of the not-too-distant future.