“As the Musical Turns: A Soap Inspiration”
with Hermitage Fellow Michael R. Jackson
Friday, October 21 at 6pm
Virtual Event: Registered Guests will receive a link 24 hours prior to the program.
Register here.
Registration is required. $5 per household.
For many, the trials and tribulations of characters on any number of contemporary soap operas have been constant companions for years; we laugh at their antics, cry at their heartbreaks, and scratch our heads at their improbable circumstances. In the hands of Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award Winner Michael R. Jackson there is more than a quickly accessible story in soap operas; there is cultural insight with a biting wit. Funny and irreverent but always quintessentially human, hear from Michael on how soap operas and other sources of inspiration have shaped his work in a candid conversation featuring soap opera icon Colleen Zenk (Barbara Ryan, As the World Turns) moderated by Hermitage Artistic Director and CEO Andy Sandberg.
Michael R. Jackson is a returning Hermitage Fellow and the recipient of the 2020 Pulitzer Prize in Drama. Jackson’s Pulitzer Prize, Tony Award, and New York Drama Critics Circle winning musical A Strange Loop (which had its world premiere at Playwrights Horizons in association with Page 73 Productions) was called “a full-on laparoscopy of the heart, soul, and loins” and a “gutsy, jubilantly anguished musical with infectious melodies” by Ben Brantley for The New York Times. In addition to A Strange Loop, Jackson also wrote book, music, and lyrics for White Girl in Danger. Awards and associations include the New Professional Theatre Festival Award, a Jonathan Larson Grant, a Lincoln Center Emerging Artist Award, an ASCAP Foundation Harold Adamson Award, a Whiting Award, the Helen Merrill Award for Playwriting, an Outer Critics Circle Award, a Drama Desk Award, an Obie Award, an Antonyo Award, a Fred Ebb Award, and a Dramatist Guild Fellowship. Jackson is an alum of Page 73’s Interstate 73 Writers Group. For a full bio, visit: TheLivingMichaelJackson.com