Musicals, Devised and Collaborative Work
I write books for musicals, and often collaborate with devising ensembles and bands,
Past collaborations include:
The Bengsons (playwright/book writer)
Hundred Days
Music & Lyrics by The Bengsons
Book by The Bengsons and Sarah Gancher
Directed by Anne Kauffman
Choreography by Sonya Tayeh
Hundred Days is the uncensored, exhilarating, and heartrending true story of how Abigail and Shaun Bengson met and fell in love, and how that love unleashed their terror of mortality. With magnetic chemistry and anthemic folk-punk music, the Bengsons explore the fundamental question of how to make the most of the time that we have.
Hundred Days was created by Abigail and Shaun Bengson with their collaborators Anne Kauffman and Sarah Gancher.
[2020-Present] Various licensed productions worldwide
[2020] Tokyo (Japanese production)
[2019] Arsht Center, Miami
[2019] Straz Center, Tampa
[2018] NY Times Critic's Pick
[2018] La Jolla Playhouse
[2018] New York Theatre Workshop
[2017] Under the Radar Festival at The Public Theatre
[2017] NY Times Critic's Pick
[2018] Two Drama League Award Nominations: Best Production of a Musical and Distinguished Performance Award (Abigail Bengson)
[2018] Two Lucille Lortel Award Nominations: Outstanding Musical and Outstanding Lead Actress in a Musical (Abigail Bengson)
Cast album available on Ghostlight Records
Licensed via Broadway Licensing
Script published by New York Theater Workshop
Licensed producitons in Chicago, Denver, Tokyo and beyond
The Lucky Ones
Music & Lyrics by The Bengsons
Book by The Bengsons and Sarah Gancher
Directed by Anne Kauffman
Choreography by Sonya Tayeh
Commissioned by Ars Nova
A memory-tale of teenaged passion, ideals lived to the limits, family shattered and faith lost — all in hope of finding a way home again. Through soulful electro-folk songs, this driving, semi-autobiographical story grabs joy and grief with the same hand and holds them tightly, in a radical affirmation of being alive.
[2018] Ars Nova full production at the Connelly Theatre, NYC
[2019] Richard Rodgers Award for Musical Theatre
[2018] Won Lucille Lortel Awards for Outstanding Choreographer (Sonya Tayeh) and Outstanding Lead Actor in a Musical (Damon Daunno)
[2018] Three more Lortel Award Nominations: Outstanding Featured Actress in a Musical (Maryann Plunkett, Myra Lucretia Taylor, and Adina Verson)
[2018] Three Drama Desk Nominations: Best Music, Outstanding Featured Actor in a Musical (Damon Daunno), and Outstanding Lighting for a Musical (Amith Chandrashaker)
The TEAM (collaborating playwright)
Mission Drift
by The TEAM in collaboration with Heather Christian and Sarah Gancher
Directed by Rachel Chavkin
Music by Heather Christian
http://theteamplays.org/work/mission-drift
A critically acclaimed contemporary musical that journeys west through time and space in pursuit of the soul of American capitalism. Amidst a score that fuses Vegas glitz with Western ballads, seductive storyteller Miss Atomic interweaves the epic saga of two immortal Dutch teens with an intimate portrait of a cocktail waitress and a cowboy in this political and urgent work about creation and destruction, bankruptcy and bonanza, and the crumbling myth of an eternal frontier.
[2013] National Theatre, London
[2013] Perth International Arts Festival
[2013] Hong Kong Arts Festival
[2012] PS 122's COIL Festival, NYC
[2011] Salzberg Festival
[2011] Edinburgh Fringe Festival (Traverse Theatre)
[2011] Universide de Coimbra
[2011] Culturgest, Lisbon, Portugal
(Plus numerous residencies and workshop performances)
[2020] The Guardian's Top 50 Theater Shows of the 20th Century
[2013] Rave London reviews
[2012] Nominated for two Drama League Awards: Best Production of a Musical and Distinguished Performance Award (Heather Christian.)
[2011] Edinburgh International Festival Fringe Award
[2011] Winner: Scotsman Fringe First
[2011] Herald Angel
Best of 2011, The Guardian
Cast album available on Spotify
Published by Oberon Books, UK
Published in The TEAM's anthology Five Plays by The TEAM
Subject of the full-length documentary The TEAM MAKES A PLAY
Hand2Mouth (collaborating playwright)
Something's Got a Hold on My Heart
by Hand2Mouth's ensemble with collaborating writer Sarah Gancher
Directed by Jonathan Walters,
Featuring music by Ash Black Buffalo and Hand2Mouth
A performance in three movements, Something’s Got Ahold Of My Heart creates an onstage space where tumultuous and tender feelings of love hang thick in the air and six performers lay their bodies down and fight to keep their love alive. Drawing from interviews, found text, and seminal concert footage, Something’s Got Ahold Of My Heart wrestles with our desire to craft the perfect declaration of love, and the tension between the ideal and the reality of long-term commitment.
[2013] LA Mama ETC, NYC
[2013] Fertile Ground Festival, Portland, OR
[2012] EMPAC, the Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center at RPI.
(Plus numerous residencies and workshop performances)
Telluride Theatre (playwright)
CON: A Play About Liars
by Sarah Gancher in collaboration with Sasha Cucciniello and the cast
Directed by Jen Wineman
Written in four weeks for Colorado’s Squidshow, a group of beautiful lunatics making world-class work in the Rocky Mountains. Con intersected tales of famous con men with the true story of a company member's discovery that her father was a professional con man . The play incorporated vaudeville, clowing, and heartwrenching scenes drawn from real life.
[2011] Production at Nugget Theater Telluride CO
WAKE UP!
by Sarah Gancher in collaboration with the cast
Directed by Jen Wineman
The Bóogravîan Opera Naçionale has come to town to present their most famous national epic, Wake Up! A big-hearted clown show with a very dark sense of humor, performed in a made-up language. This site-specific production in a big circus tent featured atrocious singing, very inept dancing, and lots of tears.
[2012] Production with Telluride Theatre at The Telluride Pavillion
Cataclysm
by Sarah Gancher in collaboration with the cast
Directed by Jen Wineman
A site-specific play performed at the Deep Creek Mine outside Telluride, Colorado. Set in a post-apocalyptic world that's suffered a complete environmental, governmental, and financial collapse, Cataclysm follows an unlikely group of survivors as they decide what they want to bring with them from the past — and what should be left behind. Their tenuous first days, relationships, stories, and memories become the subject of future generations' mythologies.
[2010] Site specific production at Deep Creek Mine, Telluride, CO
Past collaborations include:
The Bengsons (playwright/book writer)
Hundred Days
Music & Lyrics by The Bengsons
Book by The Bengsons and Sarah Gancher
Directed by Anne Kauffman
Choreography by Sonya Tayeh
Hundred Days is the uncensored, exhilarating, and heartrending true story of how Abigail and Shaun Bengson met and fell in love, and how that love unleashed their terror of mortality. With magnetic chemistry and anthemic folk-punk music, the Bengsons explore the fundamental question of how to make the most of the time that we have.
Hundred Days was created by Abigail and Shaun Bengson with their collaborators Anne Kauffman and Sarah Gancher.
[2020-Present] Various licensed productions worldwide
[2020] Tokyo (Japanese production)
[2019] Arsht Center, Miami
[2019] Straz Center, Tampa
[2018] NY Times Critic's Pick
[2018] La Jolla Playhouse
[2018] New York Theatre Workshop
[2017] Under the Radar Festival at The Public Theatre
[2017] NY Times Critic's Pick
[2018] Two Drama League Award Nominations: Best Production of a Musical and Distinguished Performance Award (Abigail Bengson)
[2018] Two Lucille Lortel Award Nominations: Outstanding Musical and Outstanding Lead Actress in a Musical (Abigail Bengson)
Cast album available on Ghostlight Records
Licensed via Broadway Licensing
Script published by New York Theater Workshop
Licensed producitons in Chicago, Denver, Tokyo and beyond
The Lucky Ones
Music & Lyrics by The Bengsons
Book by The Bengsons and Sarah Gancher
Directed by Anne Kauffman
Choreography by Sonya Tayeh
Commissioned by Ars Nova
A memory-tale of teenaged passion, ideals lived to the limits, family shattered and faith lost — all in hope of finding a way home again. Through soulful electro-folk songs, this driving, semi-autobiographical story grabs joy and grief with the same hand and holds them tightly, in a radical affirmation of being alive.
[2018] Ars Nova full production at the Connelly Theatre, NYC
[2019] Richard Rodgers Award for Musical Theatre
[2018] Won Lucille Lortel Awards for Outstanding Choreographer (Sonya Tayeh) and Outstanding Lead Actor in a Musical (Damon Daunno)
[2018] Three more Lortel Award Nominations: Outstanding Featured Actress in a Musical (Maryann Plunkett, Myra Lucretia Taylor, and Adina Verson)
[2018] Three Drama Desk Nominations: Best Music, Outstanding Featured Actor in a Musical (Damon Daunno), and Outstanding Lighting for a Musical (Amith Chandrashaker)
The TEAM (collaborating playwright)
Mission Drift
by The TEAM in collaboration with Heather Christian and Sarah Gancher
Directed by Rachel Chavkin
Music by Heather Christian
http://theteamplays.org/work/mission-drift
A critically acclaimed contemporary musical that journeys west through time and space in pursuit of the soul of American capitalism. Amidst a score that fuses Vegas glitz with Western ballads, seductive storyteller Miss Atomic interweaves the epic saga of two immortal Dutch teens with an intimate portrait of a cocktail waitress and a cowboy in this political and urgent work about creation and destruction, bankruptcy and bonanza, and the crumbling myth of an eternal frontier.
[2013] National Theatre, London
[2013] Perth International Arts Festival
[2013] Hong Kong Arts Festival
[2012] PS 122's COIL Festival, NYC
[2011] Salzberg Festival
[2011] Edinburgh Fringe Festival (Traverse Theatre)
[2011] Universide de Coimbra
[2011] Culturgest, Lisbon, Portugal
(Plus numerous residencies and workshop performances)
[2020] The Guardian's Top 50 Theater Shows of the 20th Century
[2013] Rave London reviews
[2012] Nominated for two Drama League Awards: Best Production of a Musical and Distinguished Performance Award (Heather Christian.)
[2011] Edinburgh International Festival Fringe Award
[2011] Winner: Scotsman Fringe First
[2011] Herald Angel
Best of 2011, The Guardian
Cast album available on Spotify
Published by Oberon Books, UK
Published in The TEAM's anthology Five Plays by The TEAM
Subject of the full-length documentary The TEAM MAKES A PLAY
Hand2Mouth (collaborating playwright)
Something's Got a Hold on My Heart
by Hand2Mouth's ensemble with collaborating writer Sarah Gancher
Directed by Jonathan Walters,
Featuring music by Ash Black Buffalo and Hand2Mouth
A performance in three movements, Something’s Got Ahold Of My Heart creates an onstage space where tumultuous and tender feelings of love hang thick in the air and six performers lay their bodies down and fight to keep their love alive. Drawing from interviews, found text, and seminal concert footage, Something’s Got Ahold Of My Heart wrestles with our desire to craft the perfect declaration of love, and the tension between the ideal and the reality of long-term commitment.
[2013] LA Mama ETC, NYC
[2013] Fertile Ground Festival, Portland, OR
[2012] EMPAC, the Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center at RPI.
(Plus numerous residencies and workshop performances)
Telluride Theatre (playwright)
CON: A Play About Liars
by Sarah Gancher in collaboration with Sasha Cucciniello and the cast
Directed by Jen Wineman
Written in four weeks for Colorado’s Squidshow, a group of beautiful lunatics making world-class work in the Rocky Mountains. Con intersected tales of famous con men with the true story of a company member's discovery that her father was a professional con man . The play incorporated vaudeville, clowing, and heartwrenching scenes drawn from real life.
[2011] Production at Nugget Theater Telluride CO
WAKE UP!
by Sarah Gancher in collaboration with the cast
Directed by Jen Wineman
The Bóogravîan Opera Naçionale has come to town to present their most famous national epic, Wake Up! A big-hearted clown show with a very dark sense of humor, performed in a made-up language. This site-specific production in a big circus tent featured atrocious singing, very inept dancing, and lots of tears.
[2012] Production with Telluride Theatre at The Telluride Pavillion
Cataclysm
by Sarah Gancher in collaboration with the cast
Directed by Jen Wineman
A site-specific play performed at the Deep Creek Mine outside Telluride, Colorado. Set in a post-apocalyptic world that's suffered a complete environmental, governmental, and financial collapse, Cataclysm follows an unlikely group of survivors as they decide what they want to bring with them from the past — and what should be left behind. Their tenuous first days, relationships, stories, and memories become the subject of future generations' mythologies.
[2010] Site specific production at Deep Creek Mine, Telluride, CO
