ZM (ZOMBIE MUSICAL) Will Make American Premiere at New Line Theatre

New Line Theatre will kick off its 35th season with the American premiere of ZM (zombie musical) from Mark Hollmann and Greg Kotis, the Tony-winning mad geniuses behind Urinetown.

Part Walking Dead, part Bat Boy, and part “you probably shouldn't eat that,” ZM (zombie musical) is a weird, wild, comic fable about what happens when corporate America goes very, very wrong. Set in an American small town, a fast-food chain test-markets a new chicken sandwich – which turns customers into zombies. (Singing zombies even.)

It's outrageous. It's ridiculous. It's also freakishly close to real life. In fact, Americans eat 17,000 Chicken McNuggets every second, we buy 5,000,000 buckets of Kentucky Fried Chicken every month, and we spend $10,000,000,000 on Chick-fil-A sandwiches every year – all of which makes ZM a reality-adjacent, zombie-filled, musical comedy nightmare. Rehearsals are underway and we're already having so much fun! We can't wait for you to see what we're cooking up.

New Line's all-local cast for ZM includes both veteran New Liners and some very exciting new voices, including John Lucas (as Barnabas Young), Adeline Hudelson (Mercy Rider), Kenya Devine (Lydia Light), Jeff Loeffler (William Hutt), Leah Connolly (Billie Hutt, Jr.), Robert Hanson (Hippy John), Kathleen Dwyer (Henrietta Cooke), Steph House (Anna Cole), Jacob Brewer (Junius Hampton), Bee Mecey (Julia Hempstead), Tawaine Noah (Solomon Dyer/ Abraham Hutt), Lamarkus Jones, (Enoch Brown/ Jacob Hutt), and Daniel Chioco (Uriah Higgins)..

New Line's production is directed by Scott Miller and Chris Moore, with music direction by Jason Eschhofen, choreography by Livy Potthoff, sound design by Ryan Day, scenic design by Dr. Rob Lippert, costume design by Madeline Trinity, and lighting design by Eric Wennlund.

On Saturday, October 17, after the performance, the cast and staff will stick around for a brief Q&A session with the audience. For every show New Line produces, they whip up a signature cocktail, concocted especially for that show, available only on performance nights at the refreshment counter in the Marcelle lobby.  During the run of ZM, our signature cocktail will be "Live Human Flesh."