Transport Group, the winner of a special 2007 Drama Desk Award and a 2007 Obie Award, will present a workshop of the Richard Rodgers Award-winning musical See Rock City & Other Destinations, music by Brad Alexander, book and lyrics by Adam Mathias, June 6 - 13 at The New 42nd Street Studios. The workshop, which is directed by Transport Group artistic director Jack Cummings III, is being presented for an invited audience.
Winner of the 2008
Richard Rodgers Award for Staged Reading, administered by the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the BMI Foundation's 2007
Jerry Bock Award, See Rock City & Other Destinations is a contemporary pop-rock musical about everyday travelers at tourist destinations across America. A wanderer believes his destiny is written on rooftops along the North Carolina Interstate. A young man yearns to connect with intelligent life in Roswell, New Mexico. A woman at the Alamo steps out of the shadow of her grandparents' idealized romance to take a chance on love. Three estranged sisters cruise to Glacier Bay to scatter their father's ashes. Two high school boys face unexpected fears in the Coney Island Spook House. A terrified bride-to-be ponders taking the leap...over Niagara Falls. Each story builds on the last to create a vivid travelogue of connections missed and connections made.
Presentations of the workshop will be at the following times: Saturday, June 6 at 1:30pm and 4:30pm; Friday, June 12 at 1:30pm and 4:30pm; Saturday, June 13 at 1:30pm and 4:30pm.
The cast of See Rock City & Other Destinations is
Kerry O'Malley (Drama Desk nominee for Into The Woods);
Jonathan Hammond (Kennedy Center's Ragtime);
Stanley Bahorek (The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee);
Phoebe Strole (Spring Awakening);
Ryan Hilliard (Grey Gardens);
Heather Ayers (Young Frankenstein); and
Josh Young (Les Miserables). Musical direction and orchestrations are by
Justin Hatchimonji.
Brad Alexander is a NYC-based songwriter whose music has been featured on Sony Records, Select Records, Showtime, VH1 and at theaters across the country. He wrote the music for Theatreworks USA's Just So Stories, Lilly's Big Day, and the upcoming Click Clack Moo, directed by
John Rando (Tony Award-winner for Broadway's Urinetown). Brad and collaborator Adam Mathias won the 2008
Richard Rodgers Award and 2007
Jerry Bock Award for their full-length musical See Rock City & Other Destinations, which premiered at
Barrington Stage Company. "Sugar and Spring," a song he co-wrote with EdibleRed, is the first release off the band's debut CD, Welcome To My Bad Behavior. He is a member of The BMI Advanced
Musical Theatre Workshop, The National Academy of Popular Music, The National Alliance for Musical Theatre and The
Dramatists Guild of America.
Adam Mathias's musicals include See Rock City & Other Destinations (music by
Brad Alexander) which premiered at
Barrington Stage Company, August 2008. See Rock City & Other Destinations received the 2008
Richard Rodgers Award from the American Academy of Arts & Letters, and the 2007
Jerry Bock Award from the BMI Foundation. Other musicals include The Passion of George W. Bush (book & lyrics by Adam Mathias & John Herin, music by Alden Terry) which premiered at the 2004 New York International Fringe Festival and was performed in an election-eve concert version presented at Joe's Pub. His work has been performed at Birdland, The Triad,
The Duplex, The
Laurie Beechman, Raw Impressions, Prospect Theater Company, Chicago Dramatist Workshop, and Musicals Tonight by artists including
Anthony Rapp, Sarah Ramirez,
Gavin Creel,
Christian Borle,
Hunter Foster and
Malcolm Gets. Adam is a graduate of The Theatre School of DePaul University and the NYU TISCH Graduate Musical Theatre Writing Program. He is a proud member of the BMI Lehmann Engel
Musical Theatre Workshop (2005 Jerry Harrington Award) and the Dramatist Guild.
Founded in 2001,
Transport Group, under the leadership of
Jack Cummings III, Artistic Director, and
Lori Fineman, Executive Director, is a not-for-profit theatre company that develops and produces work by
American Playwrights and composers with the aim of exploring the American consciousness in the 20th and 21st centuries.
Transport Group presented its premiere production in 2002:
Thornton Wilder's Our Town, which featured older actors in the roles of Emily and George and a twelve-year-old girl as the Stage Manager. Its second production, Requiem for William, an evening of seven seldom produced plays by
William Inge, that featured a cast of 26 as well as original songs, premiered in 2003. In 2004 the company presented the first New York revival of
Michael John LaChiusa's First Lady Suite, which received rave reviews, played to sold-out houses, and earned two Drama Desk Award nominations including outstanding revival of a musical. Recent productions include the world premiere of the musical The Audience, which featured a cast of 46 actors and earned three Drama Desk Award nominations, including outstanding musical; Normal, a new musical about a mother's battle to save her daughter from anorexia; cul-de-sac, a new play by Tony Award nominee
John Cariani; the first New York revival of
Tad Mosel's Pulitzer Prize play, All the Way Home; the 50th anniversary, Obie-winning production of
William Inge's The Dark at the Top of the Stairs, the world premiere musicals Crossing Brooklyn, Marcy in the Galaxy, and Being Audrey, and the first New York revival of
Irwin Shaw's Bury the Dead. Both First Lady Suite and Bury the Dead were filmed for the New York Performing Arts Library's Theatre on Film and Tape Archive.
Transport Group is the winner of a special 2007 Drama Desk Award for its "breadth of vision and its presentation of challenging productions."
