SLAM FRANK Comes to Asylum NYC This Fall
The show begins performances on Wednesday, September 17 at 9:30 pm.
What happens when a progressive community theater troupe decides that “now is not the time to center privileged, straight, white Europeans (who happened to be hiding from Nazis)”? The answer is Slam Frank, a genre-defying musical satire that's igniting debate long before opening night.
SLAM FRANK will premiere this fall, featuring a score by Andrew Fox (orchestrator/arranger of Starkid: Homecoming, SONDHEIM IN THE STYLE OF…) and a book by Joel Sinensky (Daisy Jones & The Six, Wicked, and Roadies). Directed by Sam LaFrage, the production that begins performances on Wednesday, September 17 at 9:30 pm has already sold out the first two weeks of its September run at Asylum NYC (123 E 24th St, NYC), with performances scheduled through October. Tickets are $60-120.
Inspired by a real 2022 Twitter thread asking, “Did Anne Frank ever acknowledge her white privilege?”, Slam Frank takes aim at the intersection of art, absurdity, and identity. The show reimagines Anne Frank's life through a self-aware lens of overzealous inclusivity: Anita Franco is now a pansexual Latinx girlboss with a hip-hop diary flow; Peter van Daan is a non-binary dancer struggling against gender norms; and Mister Van Daan, the lone cishet male, is literally worse than the Nazis.
And you, the audience, have the privilege of witnessing it.
CONTENT WARNING: Everything.
WHY IT MATTERS: Slam Frank has already gained viral momentum on social media without a marketing budget and has sold out performances in advance. The project was explicitly rejected by major development programs, most notably being disinvited from the BMI Musical Theater Workshop.
Despite this (or perhaps because of it), Slam Frank has amassed a surprisingly broad coalition of fans—from diversity advocates to anti-woke provocateurs, from Israeli survivors of the Nova Massacre to several of the internet's most-followed anti-Israel streamers.
In short, Slam Frank may be the most divisive show in New York. And that's exactly the point.
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