New Musical TEETH Gets Second Extension At Playwrights Horizons

Playwrights Horizons has announced a second two-week extension of the world premiere production of Teeth, a new musical with book and music by Anna K. Jacobs and book and lyrics by Michael R. Jackson, directed by Sarah Benson with choreography by Raja Feather Kelly. Teeth, which began previews on February 21 and opened last night (March 19), now runs through April 28 on the Mainstage at Playwrights Horizons.

Based on the 2007 cult classic comedy horror film of the same name and presented by special arrangement with Mark Gordon Pictures and LD Entertainment, Teeth is a sharp tale of revenge and transformation that tears through a culture of shame and repressed desire one delightfully unhinged song at a time.

Read reviews for the show here!

Teeth features Alyse Alan Louis (Broadway: Amelie; Off-Broadway: White Girl in Danger) in the central role of Dawn O'Keefe, Courtney Bassett (Broadway: Natasha, Pierre, & the Great Comet of 1812; Off-Broadway: Titanique) as Promise Keeper Girl Becky, Phoenix Best (Broadway: Dear Evan Hansen, The Color Purple) as Promise Keeper Girl Fiona, Will Connolly (Broadway: Once; Off-Broadway: After the Blast) as Brad O'Keefe, Jason Gotay (TV: “Gossip Girl,” Peter Pan Live!) as Tobey/Truthseeker, Jenna Rose Husli (Off-Broadway: A Tiny Bit of Sky) as Promise Keeper Girl Trisha, Jared Loftin (Gigantic, A.D. 16) as Ryan/Truthseeker, Steven Pasquale (Broadway: American Son; Off-Broadway: Here We Are) as Pastor Bill O'Keefe, Lexi Rhoades (Off-Broadway: Sugar, Sistas: The Musical) as Promise Keeper Girl Rachael, Wren Rivera (Broadway: Jagged Little Pill; Regional: Bye Bye Birdie) as Promise Keeper Girl Stephanie, Helen J Shen (Regional: Mamma Mia!, The Wedding Singer) as Promise Keeper Girl Keke.

The Teeth creative team includes Adam Rigg (Scenic Design), Enver Chakartash (Costume Designer), Jane Cox and Stacey Derosier (Lighting Designers), Palmer Hefferan (Sound Designer), Jeremy Chernick (Special Effects Designer), Kris Kukul (Orchestrations), Julie McBride (Music Supervisor), Kristy Norter (Music Contractor), Patrick Sulken (Music Director), Robert Pickens and Katie Gell (Hair, Wig, and Makeup Designers), Dom Letterii (Wardrobe Crew), Crista Marie Jackson (Intimacy Director), Robert Westley (Fight Director), Taylor Williams, CSA (Casting), and Alaine Alldaffer, CSA (Casting). Stage management: Amanda Spooner (Production Stage Manager) and Thomas Dieter (Stage Manager).

Teeth follows Dawn O'Keefe (Alyse Alan Louis), an evangelical Christian teen struggling to be an exemplar of purity amongst her community of fellow Promise Keeper Girls. Her stepbrother, Brad (Will Connolly)—alienated by his repressive upbringing in the community led by his fanatical Pastor father (Steven Pasquale) and intrigued by the online camaraderie of the Truthseeker men's support group—is haunted by an indelible incident from his and Dawn's past. As Dawn's desires become tested and twisted by the men in her life, she discovers a deadly secret not even she understands: when men violate her, her body bites back—literally. Crackling with irrepressible desire and ancient rage, Teeth is a dark comedy conjuring the legend of one girl whose sexual curse may also be her salvation.

About Michael R. Jackson

Michael R. Jackson is one of Time Magazine's 100 most influential people of 2022. His Pulitzer Prize and New York Drama Critics Circle winning A Strange Loop (which had its 2019 world premiere at Playwrights Horizons in association with Page 73 Productions) received 11 Tony nominations in 2022, and was called "a full-on laparoscopy of the heart, soul, and loins" as well as a "gutsy, jubilantly anguished musical with infectious melodies" by Ben Brantley for The New York Times. In The New Yorker, Vinson Cunningham wrote, "To watch this show is to enter, by some urgent, bawdy magic, an ecstatic and infinitely more colorful version of the famous surreal lithograph by M. C. Escher: the hand that lifts from the page, becoming almost real, then draws another hand, which returns the favor." In addition to A Strange Loop, he also wrote book, music and lyrics for White Girl in Danger. Awards and associations include: a New Professional Theatre Festival Award, a Jonathan Larson Grant, a Lincoln Center Emerging Artist Award, an ASCAP Foundation Harold Adamson Award, a Whiting Award, the Helen Merrill Award for Playwriting, an Outer Critics Circle Award, a Drama Desk Award, an Obie Award, a Fred Ebb Award, a Windham-Campbell Prize, a Dramatist Guild Fellowship. He is an alum of Page 73's Interstate 73 Writers Group.

About Anna K. Jacobs

Anna K. Jacobs is a Jonathan Larson and Billie Burke Ziegfeld Award-winning composer, lyricist, and book writer. In addition to Teeth, her stage musicals include POP! (Yale Rep, Pittsburgh City Theatre, Studio Theatre, etc.; book/lyrics by Maggie-Kate Coleman), Anytown (George Street Playhouse; book by Jim Jack), Harmony, Kansas (Diversionary Theatre; book/lyrics by Bill Nelson), Echo (Musical Theatre Factory), and Stella and the Moon Man (Sydney Theatre Company/Theatre of Image; play by Richard Tulloch, co-composed with Adrian Kelly). She also contributed music and lyrics to the multi-composer works, Witnesses (California Center for the Arts) and Letters to the President (Cooper Union), and penned the screenplay for The Real Gemma Jordan (University of Nebraska-Lincoln), which she is now adapting into a stage musical with composer-lyricist, Rob Rokicki. Anna and her playwright-collaborator, Anna Ziegler, are currently working on A House Without Windows, a new musical about the life and disappearance of child prodigy author, Barbara Newhall Follett, which was commissioned by Barbara Whitman Productions and Grove Entertainment, and recently seen as part of the Goodspeed Musicals 2022 Festival of New Musicals. She is also writing the book for a new musical adaptation of Moana for Disney Cruise Line Entertainment, featuring a score by Lin-Manuel Miranda and Opetaia Foa'i.

About Sarah Benson

Sarah Benson is an Obie award-winning theater director based in New York City. Recent credits include: Jackie Sibblies Drury's Fairview (Soho Rep, TFANA & Berkeley Rep) the play won the 2019 Pulitzer Prize for Drama and Benson was nominated for a Drama Desk for direction; Suzan-Lori Parks' In The Blood (Signature Theater). At Soho Rep: Richard Maxwell's Samara with music by Steve Earle; César Alvarez and The Lisps' Futurity (ART, Walker Arts Center and in New York with Ars Nova) Callaway Award; Lortel Award for Best Musical; Branden Jacobs-Jenkins' An Octoroon (Soho Rep & TFANA); Lucas Hnath's A Public Reading of an Unproduced Screenplay About the Death of Walt Disney;  Sarah Kane's Blasted (OBIE award, Drama Desk nomination); David Adjmi's Elective Affinities featuring Zoe Caldwell (site-specific). Benson also directed the award-winning Skittles Commercial: The Broadway Musical (Town Hall) for the 2019 Super bowl. In addition to Futurity, Benson has also collaborated with César Alvarez on several of their projects, both current and upcoming, including The Potluck, Noise, and Elementary Spacetime Show. Benson is a Vilcek Foundation awardee and moved to New York from London on a Fulbright. She was a Director of Soho Rep from 2008 until 2023. During her tenure, the theater garnered fifteen OBIE awards and the Drama Desk Award for Sustained Artistic Excellence.

About Raja Feather Kelly

Raja Feather Kelly is a choreographer and director, and the Artistic Director of the feath3r theory (TF3T), a dance-theater-media company. Kelly has created 18 evening-length premieres with the feath3r theory, most recently UGLY Part 3: BLUE at Chelsea Factory. The company's latest work, The Absolute Future, premieres in 2024. His choreography was seen in White Girl in Danger at the Second Stage Kiser Theater, written by Michael R. Jackson and directed by Lileana Blain-Cruz. He choreographed the Tony Award-winning Broadway musical A Strange Loop (Lyceum Theatre, premiered off-Broadway at Playwrights Horizons), and is also a choreographer for Off-Broadway theater with frequent collaborators like Jackson, Blain-Cruz, Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, and Sarah Benson. Recent works include Bunny Bunny (UC San Diego), We're Gonna Die (Second Stage Theater), SUFFS (The Public Theater), Lempicka (La Jolla Playhouse), and Scenes for an Ending for the Ririe-Woodbury Dance Company. He has received numerous accolades, including a Princeton Arts Fellowship (2023-2025), three Princess Grace Awards, an Obie Award, an Outer Critics Circle honor for choreography for the Pulitzer Prize-winning and Tony Award-winning musical A Strange Loop, a Randjelović/Stryker Resident Commissioned Artist at New York Live Arts, a Jerome Hill Artist Fellowship, a Creative Capital award, a Breakout Award for choreography from the Stage Directors and Choreographers Foundation (SCDF), the Solange MacArthur Award for New Choreography, Dance Magazine's Harkness Promise Award, and the SDCF Joe A. Callaway Award finalist for outstanding choreography of Fairview (Soho Rep, Berkeley Rep, TFANA, and winner of the 2019 Pulitzer Prize for Drama).

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