Milky Way Theatre Company to Present First Annual New Works Festival Featuring Three New Works

Milky Way Theatre Company, a New York City based theatre company that aimed at creating theatre that speaks to our shared humanity, is opening a festival of three new works in staged reading format starting January 12.

The First Inaugural New Works Festival:

Masked: The Musical by Tianna Davis

Performs on Thursday, January 12th at 7:00pm at Theatre 71

The American I.D. Channel: Vol. One by Mx. Hasberry
PLEASE NOTE: DIFFERENT VENUE FOR THIS PLAY:
Performs on Friday, January 20th at 7:30pm at the Bernie Wohl Center at the Goddard Riverside Community Center

Ellipses by David Quang Pham

Performs on Thursday, January 26th at 7:30pm at Theatre 71

"We are thrilled to opens this ambitious enterise and to give opportunities toi three emergiung playwrights. Each production explores universal themes tailored to the new post-panemic, Gen Z paradigm," says Jamiel T Burkhart, an alum of The Fame School, and the Producing Artistic Director of MilkyWay Theatre Company and founding Artistic Producer of Melting Pot Collective LLC, the corpoaret entiry behind Milky way and the festival. Burkhart - next month - will appear in the upcoming off-Broadway production of Hiphop Cinderella at the New Victory Theater. He also manages events as a member of the staff of the Brooklyn Conservatory of Music.

Masked: the Musical. Book, Music, and Lyrics by Tianna Davis, Directed by Anna Hanson, Music Direction by Joshua G Fried.

Masked: The Musical follows Ava, a black girl, who goes to a modern day private school, where she soon realizes that she doesn't fit into the system. When she falls in love with an Indian student named Avi, together they must defeat the system in their school and appease their families so they can salvage their reputations and their relationship.

"I wrote Masked: The Musical because I wanted to tell stories that are never told, and I wanted to tell stories that are rarely given a spotlight. I want people to understand what it feels like to conform for others and question why society forces us to do so," says playwright Tianna Davis.

The American I.D. Channel: Vol. 1, is a new play directed by Craig Jackson, assistant directed by JMonet Hill, and written by Mx. Hasberry.

The American I.D. Channel: Vol. 1 follows an alien named The Attendant, who is the host of a space renowned late night talk show. This particular night, the A has decided to stop taking their government mandated pills, following the recent death of their twin (Enid). Throughout the play, we watch the Attendant experience the burgeoning of complex emotions as they talk to various guests that come on the show to talk about their identity and the state of their world. Woven together with satirical commercials and verbatim testimonies taken from Americans. The American I.D. Ch. aims to pull back the veil between the Gorgon world, and our own. In hopes of showing The Attendant, and the audience; that humans and Gorgons are a lot more alike than we ever realized.

The performance will be at the Goddard Riverside Community Arts Center on January 20th at 7:30pm.

"I started writing this play back in April of 2022, and since then have gained so much insight on the power that theatre can possess. I began my process by conducting interviews of American citizens/residents living around me. I then turned those interviews into monologues and scenes to try to investigate what our communal identity is as Americans," says playwright Mx. Hasberry.

The final entry is a Sci-Fi Family Musical culminating with a BIG BANG, a musical adventure written by an astrophysicist. ELLIPSES. Book, Music, and Lyrics by David Quang Pham; Directed by indie theatre luminary, Jay Michaels, with music direction by Simon Brouke and assistant directed by Si Si Nicole.

Premiering Thursday, January 26, 2023, at 7:30PM at Theatre 71 at Blessed Sacrament, 152 W 71st St, New York City. Tickets: ellipsesplay.com/events.

ELLIPSES' universe centers on the Galaxy family and their dog, Gravity. The celestial family battles the forces of puberty, maturity, relationships, dreams and ambitions, and other forces. They sing and dance their way out of a family tragedy - known as the Big Bang.
Eternity is only 90 minutes in ELLIPSES, a family musical of epic proportions. Comparing the formation of our universe to the formation of a normal (?) family is the story behind astrophysicist, David Quang Pham's wild musical ride, who uses astrological metaphors to help rationalize the universe of emotions that form as members of a single-parent family grow-up. Family is a universe of everything.

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