Rachel Chavkin won the Tony Award for best direction of a musical last month for the Tony Award winning best new musical "Hadestown." Fresh from that win she's taking on her newest project, "Annie Salem: An American Tale," the first Musical Workshop production of the 2019 Powerhouse season presented by Vassar and New York Stage and Film in Poughkeepsie, New York. The workshop will have performances July 5-7.
Adapted from the novel by Mac Wellman, "Annie Salem" features a book by Chavkin, music by Heather Christian, and lyrics by Chavkin and Christian. The show is an otherworldly journey into the jagged heart of rust-belt Ohio, where blue monkeys play in the wreckage of post-industrial America, and where high school boy Jack Scan is in love with the prettiest girl in town. It is a timely adaptation of Mac Wellman’s wry, surrealist coming-of-age story that travels through time and space, to Mars and back again as it tries to make sense of the forces lurking in the American woods.
