Acclaimed musical theater team Sam Carner and Derek Gregor present a developmental reading of their new project, Island Song. Island Song is a piece about isolation and connection in contemporary urban life.
What are boundaries when people you’ve never met are inches away? How do you know what you want in a place with so many options? How do you cut through all the noise to make and keep a connection with someone else? This mosaic of songs tells the stories of people making it through the day and night in the city, and all their painful, beautiful and funny experiences along the way. By Sam Carner and Derek Gregor, directed by Adam Fitzgerald.
Biographies
Sam Carner (Lyrics, mostly) and Derek Gregor (Music, mostly) met at NYU’s graduate musical theatre writing program. Their musical Unlock’d won a Richard Rodgers Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and was produced at the New York Musical Theatre Festival in 2007, where it won the “Best of the Fest” audience award and received Talkin’ Broadway citations for “Outstanding New Musical” and “Outstanding Original Theatrical Score.” Unlock’d has gone on to workshops at TheatreWorks Palo Alto and Ravinia. Sing, But Don’t Tell, a concert of their songs, was presented at NYMF in the fall 2009, and, in February 2010, 12 cast members from the Broadway revival of Hair performed an evening of their songs in the show Buzzed. They are currently at work on several book shows and a children’s musical, in addition to their song cycle Island Song. Two of their songs were recently nominated for Manhattan Association of Cabaret Awards (“Sing, But Don’t Tell” for Best Special Material and “After Hours” for Best Song). Derek writes country music with Laura Bell Bundy, and one of their songs was featured on her CD Longing for a Place Already Gone. Sam lectures regularly on musical theatre history and has taught musical theatre analysis courses at NYU and Yale. For more information on Sam and Derek, visit www.carnerandgregor.com.
Adam Fitzgerald is a founding member and artistic director of kef theatrical productions. With kef, Adam has directed many productions and readings, including Killing Women, Lyric is Waiting, V, Roll, Corpus Christi, Artists Rising, Michael Pesce’s Old Fashioned Piano Party, Girl in the Goldfish Bowl and The Female Terrorist Project. In the past, Adam has served as a directing fellow at Playwrights Horizons, assisting Wilson Milam, Bartlett Sher and Kate Whoriskey on plays by Nicky Silver (Three Changes with Maura Tierney), Craig Lucas (Prayer for my Enemy with Victoria Clark and Jonathan Groff) and Christina Anderson (Inked Baby with LaChanze); as the artistic associate at Playhouse West (where his production of Defiance garnered Critics Circle nominations for Director and Production; Top Ten Productions of 2007 by the Contra Costa Times); and the associate general manager at Theatre Row. Other directing credits include Ground Up Productions, EST Youngbloods, 12 Miles West, Diverse City Theater, First Look Theatre Co. (NYU), The SF Theater Festival, WE Theater (with Ironjaw Productions) and the FringeNYC (at the Cherry Lane) and Fringe Encores (at Soho Playhouse) productions of A Contemporary American’s Guide to Modern Marriage © 1959. Current projects in development include Steven Strafford’s Methtacular! and Don Creedon’s The Lobby (Producer Ellen Cohn).
For more information on kef please visit www.kefproductions.com; for more information on Libra, please visit www.libratheater.org