Other Musicals & revues
Ordinary Island
Still Life With Toe Shoes
Still Life With Toe Shoes
Book by James Armstrong
Music & Lyrics by Joshua H. Cohen
A corporate drone decides she is a pirate. It disturbs her coworkers when she shows up dressed to plunder a galleon, but gradually, the office is infected by Maggie's piracy. When Maggie is fired, she attacks her boss, and is confined to a mental institution. There, it is up to a well-meaning but unimaginative young psychiatrist to save Maggie from life in a medicated stupor... and perhaps she'll return the favor.
Under the title Maggie the Pirate, it won Chameleon Theatre Circle's 11th Annual New Play Contest. It had workshops in Western Kentucky Univesity's Before Broadway Series, with Momentum Repertory Company in NYC, and it was featured in the Composers Chamber Theatre's Sunday Nights at Square One.
Still Life With Toe Shoes
Still Life With Toe Shoes
Still Life With Toe Shoes
Music & Book by Marisa Michelson
Book & Lyrics by Joshua H. Cohen
When a painter visits a ballet class to paint the dancers, the young women start to see themselves through his eyes. Old alliances are broken, rivalries are upended, and one girl falls hard for the painter and must choose to stay in herself, in her own life, or else to fly off after him and become someone new.
Still Life had a workshop with Old Deerfield Productions in Deerfield, MA, culminating in three sold-out performances.
It was subsequently produced by the Musical Theatre Society of Emerson College, Boston, MA.
The entropy songs
Still Life With Toe Shoes
The day the world went queer!
The universe is a multibillion-year process of returning to room temperature. Sixteen songs provide snapshots of relationships in various stages of decay, and the valiant (sometimes not-so-valiant) efforts of lovers (and not-quite-lovers) to start a fire up or keep one burning. See why love is against the laws of nature... and why most of us do it anyway.
After developmental readings in New York in 2003 by the Genesius Guild/Upstairs@Red and One Arm Red, The Entropy Songs premiered at Abingdon Theatre Company, directed by Michael Page. A revised version was produced by Libra Theatre Company. Songs from the cycle have been performed across the country.
The day the world went queer!
The day the world went queer!
The day the world went queer!
Music by Lavell Blackwell
Book by Jonathan Matthew Gilbert
Lyrics by Joshua H. Cohen
Small town Sanctityville, USA, legalizes same-sex marriage, only to discover they've played into the hands of the homosexual menace. Mom gets a duck's-ass haircut and starts riding a motorcycle. Dad gets a pair of buttless leather chaps. It's up to our hetero heroes Bill and Susie to save the day... and they just might have to amend the Constitution to do it.
The show premiered in the New York International Fringe Festival, a production called "campy, witty, and quite enjoyable" by Broadway World, and "brilliant" by The Village Voice.
True Story
The day the world went queer!
True Story
Songs that are absolutely true. Almost.
True Story was produced by No Name Presents the Uptown Cabaret, and was subsequently presented at The Duplex Cabaret Theatre, both times with the composer at the piano. "A New Year's Eve Love Song" has become a sleeper comedy favorite.
The lovers
The day the world went queer!
True Story
Music & Book by Marisa Michelson
Book & Lyrics by Joshua H. Cohen
When Leslie announces he's walking out on his marriage to Avery, she does the only thing she can think of: she throws a canvas bag over her head, offering him a blank slate on which to project his fantasies. When he doesn't want to play, she makes him, and her fantasies prove more powerful than he can handle. Inspired by Rene Magritte's painting of the same title.
"The Lovers" was commissioned and produced by Prospect Theater Company in New York, NY, directed by Stefanie Sertich. It was subsequently produced by Calliope Theatre Company and by The Vineyard Playhouse.
The list
City Upside Down
The list
Book & Lyrics by Sunny Dahlia Turner
Music & Additional Lyrics by Joshua H. Cohen
Joe McCarthy's interns find his infamous list of Communists working in the State Department. So what do they do with it?
"The List" was commissioned and produced by Raw Impressions Music Theatre, New York, NY, directed by Matthew Trombetta. It was subsequently produced by Clear Space Productions in Rehoboth Beach, DE, as part of their New Works Festival, and by Libra Theatre Company, New York, NY, as part of their Midsummer Musicals.
THE Mole
City Upside Down
The list
Music by Lavell Blackwell
Book & Lyrics by Joshua H. Cohen
A liberal think tank sends a stoner hippie chick undercover as a right-wing shock-jock pundit. Will she buy into her own hype, or retain her identity as... The Mole?
The show had its first public reading as part of Emerging Artists Theatre's EATFest/Notes From a Page.
City Upside Down
City Upside Down
City Upside Down
Music by Lavell Blackwell
Book & Lyrics by Joshua H. Cohen
Based on the play Neighbourhood Upside Down by Nina Mitrović
Seven vignettes in a downtown low-income high-rise end with one character exiting through the window. Seven people fall in tandem, seeking redemption, as they race their city to the ground.
"City Upside Down" was seen in a public reading produced by the authors.