Bobby Cronin's WELCOME TO MY LIFE to Begin Performances at Wild Imaginings
Performances will run from March 27-30.
Award-winning composer/lyricist/bookwriter Bobby Cronin (Mary & Max the Musical, Daybreak) is one of two recipients of the Wild Imaginings New Musical Award for his deeply personal musical WELCOME TO MY LIFE which follows five troubled teens from various backgrounds as they face their issues at a wilderness intervention program. The showcase will have performances March 27-30.
What is it like to be a teenager in today's polarized world where technology is part of everyday life? Where school shootings are the norm and bullying runs rampant? What if teens didn't have technology to distract them from themselves, forcing communication to be face to face? WELCOME TO MY LIFE explores these ideas while giving voice to those who have faced trauma in the form of bullying, abuse, mental health issues, divorce, death, and more.
Wilderness Intervention Programs have made headlines over the past handful of years, with the Stop Institutional Child Abuse Act. Celebrity Paris Hilton became intimately involved in the effort, holding several demonstrations and news conferences in Washington, D.C., over the past several years calling for reform to the troubled teen industry. Her Netflix documentary Hell Camp: Teen Nightmareuses on her own to expose the dark issues of these programs.
Composer/writer Bobby Cronin initially set out to write a musical comedy but after doing in-person research at two different wilderness programs, one in Utah and one in Arizona, he promised the teens and adults he met that he would tell their stories with honesty and respect. The programs he attended were incredibly supportive as opposed to the ones shown in Paris Hilton's documentary. Thus, many of the stories in WELCOME TO MY LIFE are from those life-changing research trips mixed with his own experiences as a bullied, closeted teen.
The fluid theatrical experience/hybrid theatre/concert event propels the emotionally heightened story and often epic rock/pop score. The conceptual set utilizes moving projections/film on giant floor-to-ceiling LED screens (like a Porter Robinson or Pink concert) which transitions in and out of the wilderness and in and out of the characters' minds.
While WELCOME TO MY LIFE was originally created in the late 2000s/early 2010s and optioned for Broadway, the piece took a backseat to Bobby's larger projects The Concrete Jungle, Mary & Max, and ‘Til Death Do Us Part [all of which were set for productions in 2020 and cancelled due to Covid.] During the pandemic, at the urging of his agent, Bobby decided to look at WELCOME TO MY LIFE again. He threw out the original book, cut numerous songs, wrote many new ones, did Zoom readings (remember those?!), and finally in-person readings to ready the piece for submissions. The piece was a finalist in three different 2024 writing competitions and was fortunate to have been chosen by Wild Imaginings for this workshop production.
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