This summer, New York Theatre Barn and the Fire Island Pines Arts Project will partner to create Barn on Fire, a new summer residency on Fire Island for three musical theatre writing teams and their original culture shifting musicals in development. Tony Award-winning director/choreographer Jerry Mitchell will serve as a mentor to the residency which includes the new musicals Sueños: Our American Musical, Buried, Little Miss Perfect, and How to You: A Musical Guide to Black Boyhood.

Joining the writers and creatives teams for the residency will be actors Robi Hager (Spring Awakening, Little Duende), Brynn Williams (Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, SpongeBob SquarePants), Sirius XM Radio’s Julie James, Nyseli Vega, Steven Alan Black, Rachael Cell, Florencia Cuenca, Jason Hurtado, Liz Lang, Carley Lovito, Skie Ocasio, and Nyseli Vega.

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Jesse J. Sanchez (Boston Lyric Opera’s desert in, Music Supervisor/Oregon Shakespeare Festival) and Jeff Chambers’ Sueños: Our American Musical is about three generations of a Mexican American family and their pursuit of the American dream. Buried, an untold story about love, AIDS and chosen family in the American South, is co-written by Michael Ferrara (Wicked, The Music Man) and director Joe Barros (Gigi, Cagney, Bastard Jones). A coming of age and coming out story, Little Miss Perfect is written by Joriah Kwamé (winner of the 2019 “Write Out Loud” Song Competition) with dramaturgy by Teresa Attridge. Directed by Kimille Howard (Ain’t Too Proud, Metropolitan Opera’s Porgy and Bess), the residency will also include Kwamé’s How to You: A Musical Guide to Black Boyhood, a musical fantasy about the unborn spirit of a black man who learns about the realities of identity, race, and humanity before entering the world.

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Centering the artist and their work, the week-long intensive retreat in Fire Island Pines is for writers and their creative teams to collaborate and further develop their show in a supportive, creative, and tranquil atmosphere. At the end of the week, the artists will have the opportunity to present what they have been working on before a live audience. While on the island, the Pines community will get a glimpse inside the blueprint of an original musical being developed in real time. Free and open to the public, the final presentation will be on Saturday, June 25th, 2022 at 6PM in Whyte Hall’s Brandon Fradd Theater in Fire Island Pines.

The Barn on Fire residency is made possible by generous support from Dalip Girdhar & Paul Austin (The P. Austin Foundation), National Alliance for Musical Theatre’s Frank Young Fund for New Musicals, The Robert Alfandre Foundation, Straighten Your Crown Productions, Henry Robin and Bob McGarity, Sully Bonolly and Robert Litmann, Vinnie Petrarca, John Krawchuk, Richard Winger, and Matthew Woolf.