R&J—A Bowery Tale
A Musical Dramedy
by
Book Cover & Preview Text
Big Lovely, stepping up: “Slow... Put your minds together, think this through.
You have each other. Make your dream come true.”
They hold each other. Big Lovely comes closer, looks out to the sky, and sings.
Music Solo: “PROMISES OF GRACE” Big gay anthem, rocking out at end.
“We never know what strange things Fate will fling
At us. More certain though, is that we bring
Against her untoward slings and arrows, things
Of courage wrought, that do remorse out-sing.
That’s when we show, no matter what our path,
There’s more to life than fortune’s hollow ring.
It’s then we rise, past trouble’s aftermath
To promises beyond that bear no sting.
It’s what we prize, when facing Fate, that hath
So preordained our course and set our wing...
It’s how we live...That lifts us high above a troubled path...
It’s how we dream... That helps us fly beyond life’s hurtful wrath...
It’s how we love... That lets us far out-soar Fate’s epitaph...
To promises of Grace that Love doth bring...
To promises of Grace that Love doth bring.”
Applause. Blackout. Transition Music to lighter motif.
Formats
Book Details
About the Book
Laser Lights!
Pounding Club Music! Ecstatic Dancing!
And SHAKESPEARE?
Multiple versions of Shakespeare’s iconic Romeo and Juliet have delighted the public over the years. Its message of passionate, idealistic young love never fails to inspire. Now, half a century after the transformational West Side Story, the theater world cries out for an innovative play that addresses today’s dynamic multi-cultural LGBT social setting. In life’s game, sexual persuasion, gender, creed or ethnicity should not matter. Living life matters. Love matters.
Open your heart and mind and imagination to a bold new Musical Dramedy that reads like a novel and brings fresh energy and meaning to a treasured storyline.
Welcome to an irreversible new reality.
R&J
A BOWERY TALE
About the Author
Andreas Braddan, author of this play’s book and lyrics, first honed his theatrical and musical pursuits in the Yale Dramat. Studies at Vienna’s Akademie für Musik opera school and graduate work at U of Cal Berkeley soon followed, all feeding into a passion for the best of Broadway and Lincoln Center. His own creativity found widespread success in a career as an independent writer/director/producer in advertising, film and television. Recognizing the supportive relationship of all these creative and performance crafts, he helped to found the Center for the Media Arts, a professional training school for television production, filmmaking, commercial photography, MIDI music recording, computer graphics, advertising and script writing. During his leadership at CMA, he was instrumental in producing some of the entertainment world’s earliest RAP music videos (then called poetry videos) that were first presented at Joseph Papp’s Public Theater. Andreas Braddan is also author of the picaresque nautical novel Sea Interludes.
Now, in collaboration with Patrick Cannell, he brings Romeo and Juliet’s provocative message of one’s inalienable right to love to an increasingly enlightened world audience.