Current Projects
Pay the Writer Concluded its highly successful pre-Broadway engagement in
September of 2023.
Pay the Writer: A new play by New York Times bestselling author, Tawni O’Dell, starred Broadway Veteran Ron Canada (Network), Golden Globe-winning actress Marcia Cross (“Desperate Housewives”), and award-winning actor, Bryan Batt (“Mad Men”) in the leading roles. World premiere August 2023 at the prestigious Signature Theatre. It is presently in pre-production for a move to Broadway in the late Fall of 2024, or early 2025.
Pay the Writer is a sophisticated comedy drama that delves into the dynamics of a unique forty-year friendship between a gay literary agent and a world-renowned African American novelist. Heartrending and hilarious, the play follows the complicated personal and professional lives of the two men while also providing an insider’s view of the crazy, maddening, and often side-splitting world of writers and the publishing industry. Witty in dealing with egos and frailties, the play is also wise and sympathetic in its portrayal of an unlikely relationship that began at a time when both men were rejected by society and how together they survived prejudice, heartbreak, and a few bad reviews.
Venus & Adonis:
A boy wakes up one morning and goes out.
Twenty-four hours later, a distraught woman comes across his mutilated dead body.
How this tragedy unfolds is the story of Venus and Adonis, Shakespeare’s first published work and the best seller of its day.
Christopher Hunter’s brilliant one-man dramatization takes us on a journey through Shakespeare’s vibrant language into the dark pulsating heart of Venus and Adonis.
Is Venus and Adonis a soft-focus centerfold in the playbook of Elizabethan erotica?
Or is it a portrait of sexual power, love, lust and its catastrophic consequences?
After a successful run in spring 2023 at Riverside Studios, London, Venus and Adonis starring Christopher Hunter will be embarking upon a Domestic and International Tour, beginning summer of 2024.
Windows:
Windows, a dramatic new play written by New York Times bestselling author
Tawni O’Dell, is based on the highly acclaimed Podcast/Audio Drama, Closing the Distance which was released as a Podcast during the lockdown, and soared to the top of the charts and received universal five-star reviews. Windows will debut at Lincoln Center The Town Hall for a limited pre-Broadway run on March 25, 2024.
Windows asks: Is everything okay in there? 11 lives, 8 stories, 24 hours of endless frustration, fear, hilarity, anger, loss, and love unfolding behind curtains, blinds, broken glass, and bars. Whether navigating the self-reflection of isolation, or the unease of a chance meeting between strangers in need, or the simple realization of how much we value our most basic connection with others, Windows delves into the devastation and new beginnings found in a world forced to face an abyss together but alone. What we each endured as individuals when time suddenly stood still may have differed, but we were all changed by the experience. Our characters reshaped. For better or worse. What were you doing in 2020?
A Director’s Note: It is essential that the artistic community clearly understands the changing landscape that our society authors. In turn, an artistic response is not one to judge or to politicize, but simply to provoke thought as a conduit to change and understanding. Whether realized or not, the pandemic changed us all in myriad ways that transcended the physical.
We as a country must address the emotional carnage of Covid. The media pays lip service to what the pandemic did to the emotional state of our nation. Now that people are not dying in vast numbers, we as a society have "moved on," leaving a country cloaked in depression, substance abuse, suicide, and whose denizens walk beneath a cloud of soot. It is time for the creative community to address these lingering effects the way the great artists of the past addressed similar sensibilities that followed both World Wars, the Depression, Vietnam, and 9/11. We must purge/talk and share in order to heal and move on toward brighter days. This is a legacy play.
Little Did I Know: A new musical based on the acclaimed novel by Mitchell Maxwell and the subsequent groundbreaking podcast which was broadcast during lockdown.
Featuring twenty-two original songs Little Did I Know is the story of a group of friends—recent college graduates—who bring a broken-down summer theater back to life in 1976. Told with breakneck speed, the friends learn that this summer will be different from anything they expected, and what they experience will resonate throughout their lives. At turns funny, romantic, stirring, and poignant, this is an unforgettable coming-of-age story.
Little Did I Know was adapted for the stage and spearheaded by a creative dream team that included three-time Tony winner Doug Besterman, Tony and Pulitzer winning Producer Mitchell Maxwell, and Oscar and Golden Globe winner Dean Pitchford. Along the way the production was derailed by “the pandemic.” Undaunted it found life in the form of the first Broadway-Level Podcast, where, upon its release, it soared to number three on Apple and remained there for the next five months.
Little Did I Know - Synopsis
Little Did I Know - Introduction 1
YouTube superstar Kurt Hugo Schneider welcomes you to the first Broadway-level podcast musical. Sample a couple of the twenty-two original songs in the show and get the first taste of the story you're going to be singing along with.
Little Did I Know - Introduction 2
Laura Marano, star of “Austin and Ally” and “Saving Zoe” welcomes you into the world of the first Broadway-level podcast musical.
Irrelevant, a new play by New York Times bestselling author Tawni O’Dell, is a volatile, sexy, timely thriller about a beautiful writer attempting to navigate her industry’s views on racism and cancel culture, while also battling personal passions that threaten to push her to the brink of her own sanity. A brave exploration into the many faces of desire and betrayal, Irrelevant is a smart, provocative, relentless work of suspense, with an ending that will leave the audience gasping.
Irrelevant will make its world premiere in 2024.
And In The End: The Death and Life of John Lennon written by multiple Emmy Award-winner and Tony Nominated writer/director, Alexander “Sandy” Marshall.
December 8, 1980, 10.52pm New York City, The Dakota Apartments. Five bone chilling gunshots ring out, shattering the stillness of the night. One of the most iconic figures of the 20th century lies in a pool of blood struggling for life. Time stops.
Fighting to stay alive, John Lennon finds himself caught in a limbo between life and death. As his former years flash before him, Gatekeepers of his past help him confront the five stages of death – Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression and Acceptance.
And In The End is a searching, uplifting and humorous insight into the death and life of one of the most influential rock musicians of all time.
When It Happens To You: A new play by New York Times bestselling author and playwright, Tawni O’Dell, is a fictionalized account of the unquantifiable damage suffered by a victim and their family following a brutal sexual assault.
When It Happens To You will be directed by Jez Bond, the founding Artistic Director of the prestigious Park Theatre in Finsbury Park. When It Happens To You will open in July of 2024 at the Park. We are thrilled that this marvelous play will debut in London.
