Arena's Commissioned Music Series, Arena Riffs, Begins Next Week

Arena Stage at the Mead Center for American Theater will debut the first installment in the Arena Riffs series on Wednesday, March 17 at 7 p.m. The three-part series begins with a musical memoir composed and performed by award-winning indie-folk duo Abigail and Shaun Bengson. The Bengsons will premiere their new, original work My Joy is Heavy!.

The music piece brings together story and song in an intimate portrait about cultivating joy during difficult times. Filmed from their home in Vermont, this intimate, narrative performance is filled with humor passion and sorrow. The 27-minute piece is self-filmed and captures their experiences of dealing with chronic pain and pregnancy loss during the lockdown.

"Making My Joy is Heavy! with Arena Stage was a huge gift for us. We became pregnant and then went through a miscarriage during the making of this piece and creating this together was a way for us to metabolize our fear and hurt into joy together," shares Abigail and Shaun Bengson. "We offer it as an honoring of our shared community pain and as a way to celebrate together too."

The Bengsons, who are based in New York City and Vermont, have performed across the country and around the world. Their video, "The Keep Going Song", has been viewed over 4 million times.

As previously announced, Arena Riffs is a three-part commissioned music series that features three different composer and lyricist teams with musical selections infused with sounds of folk, indie and hip-hop. Each artist was given free rein in terms of what they wanted to compose. Arena Riffs are self-produced, self-contained finished pieces presented by Arena Stage. The idea for the programming started when Arena Stage's Artistic Director Molly Smith was speaking to Jocelyn Clarke, Arena's Senior Dramaturg, about the online programming. Clarke suggested musical theater and the idea caught fire. The artistic team began looking for wonderful artists and figuring out ways this ambitious idea could be accomplished.

"Arena Riffs started out as an almost impossible dream to commission three composers and their collaborators to create 20 - 30 minute musical pieces that each artist would film. It is a crazy idea and each artist has come out with distinctive, unusual, provocative, vulnerable pieces - each wholly different, reflecting their individual styles. They have succeeded beyond our expectations," shares Smith.

The second and third installment in the series will premiere on March 31 and April 14 created by artists Psalmayene 'Psalm' 24 and Rona Siddiqui, respectively.

Continuing as part of the series is the debut of The Freewheelin' Insurgents, written and directed by award-winning playwright, director and actor Psalmayene 'Psalm' 24 (Arena's The 51st State, May 22, 2020). Serving as a love letter to the Black Lives Matter movement and an elegy for theater, this musical piece examines the grief and void the pandemic, combined with the nationwide reckoning on racial injustice, has created for theater artists and audiences. The story unfolds through hip-hop and movement and explores issues of violent versus nonviolent protest, love and mental health during this unprecedented moment in history. The cast and creative team include Louis Davis, Michael Donnay, Shannon Dorsey, Nick "tha 1da" Hernandez, Jeremy Hunter, Gary L. Perkins, Psalmayene 'Psalm' 24, Danielle Preston, Tony Thomas, Aaron Tucker and Justin Weaks.

"It was glorious collaborating with some of my favorite artists to bring The Freewheelin' Insurgents to life. This dream project is a distillation of enormous love - love for the Black community and love for theater. I can't wait to share this pandemic-era hip-hop musical with Arena Stage's audience," states Psalmayene 24.

Arena Riffs will conclude with a new music piece, A More Perfect Union, written by award-winning composer Rona Siddiqui (Salaam Medina: Tales of a Halfgan, One Good Day). Drawing on inspiration from concept albums, her story will be told through a visual audio piece that showcases the different phases of the emotional life cycle of a relationship, such as bargaining and acceptance. The cast and creative team includes Doug Fitch, Em Goldman and Raja Feather Kelly.

"A More Perfect Union examines the complexities of my relationship with the United States through the intimacy of personification," shares Siddiqui. "If you listen to the album without the visual component, it could be construed as a couple's journey. The visuals clue the audience into the fact that it's grappling with exceptionalism, isolationism, blind patriotism and the denial of our history rooted in racism."

Arena Riffs is free and open to the public to watch, but reservations are encouraged by visiting here. Each original musical will be available to stream at arenastage.org.