I’m super jazzed to announce I’m a member of the inaugural cohort of The Sappho Project’s W*rk Lab!!
The W*rk Lab is a seven month workshop supporting the development of three new musicals by women, transgender, and gender non-conforming composers, lyricists, and book writers. Through a highly individualized approach and intentional community-building, the W*rk Lab aims to provide resources and visibility for the next generation of underrepresented musical theatre creators, and position them for future success.
I am working on a brand spanking new musical, POWER, inspired by the 1991 Clarence Thomas Senate Confirmation Hearings in which Anita Hill was looped into talk about Thomas’s past, obsession with pornography and his many flagrant and whack sexual advances upon herself and others that led ultimate to a liar being confirmed as Supreme Court Justice and Ms. Hill having her story co-opted every which way. I am passionate about centering an intelligent, overachieving, well-educated, from humble beginnings, morally-centered, naturally shy woman at the center of a farce as a meditation upon my own experience being microaggressioned and gas-lit nearly to death.
I’m envisioning a New Jack Swing-ass score, and am framing the story with a bit of time travel. Looking back at what we’ve accomplished as a way of looking forward and arm ourselves for what’s to come. A show reclaiming the word “we” to include black women.
I’m the book and lyrics on this project, and…..weirdly attempting to write my own music too! (That is until Jeanine Tesori sees my DMs) 🙂
Sukari Jones 