work samples
01
Song Samples
1-3. Songs from LIGHTHOUSE.
music by Veronica Mansour
LIGHTHOUSE is a 6-woman, fourth-wall-breaking, pop-country musical following our unreliable narrator "Bus," an 18 year old girl who wants nothing more than to escape her small Minnesota town— when in reality, what Bus really wants to escape? Herself, and everything she fears she could become. With a cast ranging from ages 18-70, LIGHTHOUSE explores anxiety and OCD, the lives of women in rural religious communities, and what it means to be yourself for the rest of your life. Ultimately, LIGHTHOUSE celebrates the idea that maybe, just maybe, every version of yourself is worth being.
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4-5. Songs from SWAMP SONG.
music by James Powers.
SWAMP SONG is a chamber-style folk musical that follows the intertwining stories of 4 women (and 1 dude) from classic southern folktales as they hurtle towards their inevitable, tragic ends, facing the final dire question— what kind of doom would you accept just for the chance to be loved? Using a theatrical, narrational voice and musical genre we’ve entitled “gothic swamp cowboy,” SWAMP SONG is a rich kaleidoscope of intimate storytelling, dark comedy, and the inherent grief of knowing that the only time you get to truly live might just be in the stories that come after you.
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6. QUIET WITH YOU (concept song)
music by Veronica Mansour
A concept song for a musical called "QUIET GIRL," about a young woman with misophonia (an extreme sensitivity to certain sounds) who discovers the ability to erase sound itself. But how far will she go to live a normal life?
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8. DEAD ANY WAY
music by Veronica Mansour
Part of a song cycle after forgotten sisters of famous artists, one song by Rosalie Poe, the forgotten sister of Edgar Allen Poe.
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7 & 9. STAND-ALONE
"Junebug" is a standalone song, with music by Adam LaPorte, written as an assignment for NYU's GMTWP program, where we were asked to write a song from the perspective of a character from August Wilson's Play "Gem of the Ocean." Our character is Aunt Esther as she speaks to another character named Black Mary, and features spoken stage directions in the opening. "Sara's Song" is standalone song written at NYU GMTWP for a Penn State collaboration, with music by Veronica Mansour.​
02
Other Media Samples
THE STONES - an interactive text adventure
A 30-minute text based game and dark comedy where you play a judge of the underworld, deciding which greek heroes/villains of lore go to Tartarus (mega hell) or the Elysian Fields (mega heaven). The game includes short songs (music by Matt Graham): the game isn't totally finished because guess what I don't know how to code, so instead see the songs on soundcloud! Click the image to play the game!
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I CRAVE THE HEAT
Tao, along with thousands of other workers, has one job: Dig The Tunnel to the center of the earth until she either dies from the exertion or succeeds and gets nerfed by her greatest love, the heat of the earth’s fiery core. That is, until her center-to-the-earth elevator almost explodes and sends her and the other workers staggering, in the motion of the accident Tao discovering one greater love— the power of the Feral Dance. So what’s stronger? The sweet sweet call of inevitable, magma-melting annihilation, or the rapid spread of the dancing plague? Based on the Dancing Plague of 1518 and the religious upheaval of the Reformation, this is a play that relies on over-boiling anxiety, grounded surrealism, and musical riffs of language to explore themes of global warming, capitalism, performance, and religion. It's a play about confronting and surviving radical newness, when hopelessness is so pervasive that all you can do is descend until you find the sky again.
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I CRAVE THE HEAT is a full-length one act play and is published in Some Scripts Literary Magazine.
ASTRONOMER / STARWEAVER
ASTRONOMER / STAR-WEAVER is a 10-minute musical with book/lyrics by myself and music by Chris Gierymski. Based on the myth of the origin of the stars Vega and Altaire, ASTRONOMER / STAR-WEAVER is musical about two girls who, kept apart by their separate families, sneak away to have a short moment together before they're forced to be apart again. While Vey is resigned to the two never being together, Aire begs Vey for one moment to play pretend and imagine there's nothing stopping them. Vey reluctantly agrees— but how long can pretend last?
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The pictured performance is from when this piece was performed as part of Fusion Theater's FUSION 7 New Works Festival in spring 2023.
