Polyphone 2021

The Polyphone Festival of New and Emerging Musicals is a nationally recognized festival of the emerging musical at University of the Arts in Philadelphia. For the last six years, UArts brought professional composers, librettists, directors, choreographers and music directors from the field to the Ira Brind School of Theater Arts at UArts to work with student casts and creative teams on musicals in progress.

 April 2021 - Recorded 

 

The Blazing World 
Music by Sean Eads
Book & Lyrics by Brandy Hoang Collier
Directed by Zi Alikhan
Music Directed by Mo Yeh

The Blazing World is a futuristic adaptation of Margaret Cavendish’s groundbreaking 1666 sci-fi novel. The musical follows computer engineer Margaret Hoang and her personal passion project: an A.I. program named Pyra. As Margaret struggles to make space for herself in the real world, Pyra grows more curious about worlds outside the computer.

 

Kill the Whale: A Musical Odyssey 
By Daniel Henri Emonds
Directed by Chloe Treat
Music Directed by Josh Henderson 

Kill the Whale: A Musical Odyssey refracts Moby Dick into a cycle of songs that bare the souls of each character. The chamber rock orchestra Peek-Wow and its diverse actor-musicians—steeped in rock and hip hop, folk and roots, rhythm and blues, psychedelia and soul—drives the piece towards its inevitable conclusion, much like Ahab’s ship. The narrative visits the insides of the minds of its characters––the anxieties of its narrator, the monomania of its captain, the ego death of its cabin boy––places them together in this world and offers sonic communion in the confusion of “this mixed affair called life.”

 

Shapeshifters 
By Truth Bachman
Directed by Zhailon Levingston

Shapeshifters is a musical theater piece about queer and trans teenage superheroes. The musical centers around a nonbinary teen, Mel, who—to save their own life—must answer the question: “what are you?”. Mel draws up a comic book universe wherein they lead an underground tribe of queer superheroes called the Shapeshifters. The Shapeshifters serve as Mel’s spirit guides as they set on a journey to discover, harness and protect their superpowers from an apocalyptic future. Mel and the rest must harness their powers to sustain them in flight as they take the inevitable leap from adolescence into adulthood. The Shapeshifters Universe is designed to foster queer community through conversation and song. Its characters, stories, and music speak to specific parts of the queer and trans experience. Using the lense of superhero science fiction, Shapeshifters actively encourages young queer and trans performers to consider what “others” them as their super power.

 

Lilith and Her Demons 
Created by Apartment 20
Music and Lyrics by Sarah Norcross Hough 
Directed by Randi Alexis Hickey
Orchestrations and Music Direction by Damien Figueras
additional text and stories by The Ensemble

In this modern-folk song cycle we meet the mythological she-demon, Lilith, as a rather ordinary young woman in Newark, NJ. She’s on the run, healing from betrayal and heartbreak, searching the world and herself for a sense of power and freedom. An ensemble of seven asks the question, how many lifetimes do we have to live before we get to see our redemption story through?