Chas LiBretto

1852. In the wake of Moby-Dick’s commercial and critical failure, Herman Melville travels to Nantucket with his father-in-law. The writer is also reeling from another blow, the end of his enigmatic relationship with Nathaniel Hawthorne, the Muse that guided the novel’s gestation. When Melville encounters an abandoned widow on the island’s moors, he’s struck by an idea for another book. But are his motives artistic…or is he trying to find a way back into Hawthorne’s life?

Butte, 1917: The worst mining disaster in American history sparks a massive strike on the nation's biggest copper mines, months after it has entered the First World War. Frank Little, an organizer for the radical Industrial Workers of the World, comes to town to help the strikers. But Butte's a place where everyone's got a motive. And not everyone's who they seem...

music and lyrics by Jason Landon Marcus
a musical

It’s 1715 and Sam Bellamy is in love with Mary Hallet. She’s everything he’s ever dreamed of: smart, beautiful, funny…and committed to the principles of enlightenment, inalienable rights, and theories on democratic process. But her family won’t let him see her anymore. Since the war ended, he's been out of work and doing what he can to survive in Cape Cod but he can’t seem to keep his head out of the water…let alone out of a noose.

When Sam gets word of a massive treasure in Florida, he and a small crew head down to find it. But there's no treasure to be found when they get there: just the beating hot sun of the Caribbean and an ocean full of cruel merchant captains, slavers, and a Navy with no use for out of luck veterans like Sam and his friends. Meanwhile, things aren't much better for Mary - she's pregnant and on trial for witchcraft. Faced with starvation, Sam has no choice but to accept an offer of employment from a man called Blackbeard.

Will Sam and Mary survive long enough to change the world for the better?

Or will they burn it all to the ground?

Salt Lake City, 1914. Detective Carl Carlson investigates the violent murder of a grocer and his son, a case the state of Utah seems to want to close quicker than usual. When labor leader, songwriter, and Swedish Immigrant Joe Hill is arrested, Carl must decide if this is really just a case about the murder of a grocer...or if it's a conspiracy to strangle organized labor in the west for good.

A Play with Music.

Book by Chas LiBretto
Music by J. Landon Marcus and Benjamin Sherman
Lyrics by J. Landon Marcus
A glam-rock adaptation of Euripides' Cyclops, featuring The Satyrs, a rock band of shirtless goat men, a flesh-hungry Cyclops with a penchant for singing about the one who got away, and Odysseus, a ukulele-toting soldier just trying to get home.

When the Trojan War breaks out on Laodamia’s wedding day, she desperately tries to keep her new husband Iolaus safe with her, but inadvertently exposes him to a wider world of politics and power. A nightmarish prophecy ensures that the charismatic General Odysseus has him put at the front of the lines and when Iolaus is killed in combat, Laodamia becomes the war's first widow. How she bears with grief will echo through history and myth for millennia. Inspired by the handful of surviving lines from Euripides’ lost play "Protesilaos," "The Laodamiad" explores love, war, and loss.

The tragical comedy or comical tragedy of Joseph Grimaldi and what became of the most famous clown in England and the fate of his family.

Joseph Grimaldi is the most famous comedian in the world. The son of an Italian immigrant, Grimaldi shoots to prominence through the Regency years, alongside his wife and his son, JS. But one night, JS turns up on his doorstep near death, and Grimaldi must face a secret he's kept from his family for nearly thirty years.

A True History is a muppety/puppety high-seas swashbuckling adventure, taking its inspiration from several works by a 2nd century Roman satirist named Lucian of Samosata.

Bad enough that Lucian of Samosata has just been made official tutor to the Roman emperor’s son. Now, he’s been tasked with taking the spoiled young Commodus on a tour of the empire. Alongside the sea-captain Scintharus, a young religious apologist named Justin, and a mysterious warrior from darkest Briton named Adhan, Lucian and his companions go a-voyaging…until a mutiny and a strange storm take them beyond reality itself. A river of wine, a cosmic war between the moon and the sun, the belly of a sock puppet called Glycon come horribly to life and the Elysian Fields, the final resting place of Homer himself, are just some of the places they'll visit.

Will they make it home to tell their travel tales? Is there a lost Roman colony on the dark side of the moon? And just what exactly is a "True" History, anyway?

Christmas in Texas. It's Hal's first holiday with his family since his folks left the east coast, and change is hard. Add to the mix some booze, Lisa's new boyfriend, and a surprise visit from Hal's estranged uncle and things are bound to get a little mixed up. When Hal "borrows" a car and finds himself doing amphetamines and shooting firearms in a honky-tonk far from "that new highway" with a slightly deranged barkeep named Roy, things take a surreal turn. Waylon Jennings, broken glass, and some memories better kept buried are just a few things in store this Christmas Eve.

1189 AD. When Wolfram meets Fatima of Toledo, he is set upon a quest to stop his own army from reaching Jerusalem, for he learns that the hands of the army’s leader, Emperor Frederick, contain a mysterious and ancient weapon called the Grail, whose powers over reality seem limitless. As Frederick leads his army every closer to calamity, he is plagued by nightmares of a dark figure seemingly linked to the stone. And Fatima faces the most dangerous task of all: disguising herself as a poet named Kyot and sneaking into the court of Eleanor of Aquitaine and her son, the newly crowned King Richard the Lionheart...
Part I of the "Wolfram & Kyot" trilogy.

1190 AD. The Holy Roman Emperor is dead. Drowned while crossing a river in Anatolia, his army is in disarray. A young knight named Wolfram, suspected of murdering the Emperor, flees with two mysterious relics: a battered old cup and a stone called Lapis Exilis. And in France, the young astronomer Fatima has escaped from imprisonment and is assisting the princess Berengaria on an adventure to find King Richard. As for Richard, he has returned to England to uncover a secret long kept hidden by his father: the identity of the object called the Graal.

Part II of the "Wolfram & Kyot" trilogy.

1193. The war in Palestine has ended in stalemate. Learning of a plot to steal his kingdom, King Richard heads home in secret. He is accompanied by his most trusted knights, as well a troubadour named 'Blondel,' who carries a mysterious purpose. When Richard disappears on his way home, Fatima of Toledo must once again don the guise of 'Kyot' and cross the wilds of Europe to find him. For 'Blondel' is really her friend Wolfram, and only together can they uncover the hidden truth behind...the grail.

A woman blames a Right Wing radio host when his show inspires a gunman to gun down her fiancee at a tv studio. She begins the task of methodically destroying his life. A play about mass media, violence, and grief.