"I WANNA BE A PRODUCER"

Okay, if I'm being honest, I did NOT always want to be a producer. But I have always had ideas. And I've also always had brilliant and talented friends who had written interesting and thought-provoking shows, but hadn't yet found a way to bring any of them to production. And I quickly realized the necessity of self-producing to be able to put up the kind of work I wanted to be a part of. I get hungry to create, collaborate, and bring ideas to life.

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In 2015, I founded Calendar Boys Productions which was to be an artistic home for my friends and me to do just that and immediately started planning for my first producing venture: a short musical film called Valley High (based on the song by Drew Gasparini) for which I also wrote the screenplay. It was then that I roped in a co-producer, newbie to the city (and soon to be bestie), Jeremy Terry. The film would cost us nearly twenty-five thousand dollars, but with hard work, late nights, and numerous meetings at a nearby Starbucks, we made the money. Part of that money was raised with our first cabaret production, Let's Hear It for the Boys! which played to a sold-out audience in February of 2016 and raised over $1500 on the first night of our campaign.

 

Valley High, a musical about a school shooting which tells the story from the perspective of the three shooters, while controversial, showed my interest in telling stories that were interesting, thought-provoking, unconventional, daring, and demanding of conversation but all the while, entertaining.

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In 2016, I produced a brand new musical comedy, The Commuters... or A Cautionary Tale About The Port Authority (for which I also served as director), as part of the Strawberry Theatre Festival in NYC. The production was voted "Audience Favorite" and earned five nominations (more than any other single production that year, including Best Musical) and winning the awards for Best Actress (Lizzy Miller) and Best Director.

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Late 2017, I produced a staged reading of Kit Goldstein Grant's The Giant Hoax as part of The Gallery Players' Overtures Series in Brooklyn, New York.

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Off and on from 2017-2019, I co-produced and managed multiple productions of Casey Dressler's The Wedding Warrior, a brilliantly funny, one-woman rom-com which I had been stage-managing since it's first New York production in 2014. The production has been performed internationally including at the famous Edinburgh festival in Scotland.

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In 2018, I signed on as a co-producer of the hit Dungeons & Dragons inspired improv show, The Campaign, which played monthly to sold-out houses at The PIT in Midtown Manhattan. This love letter to tabletop gaming and all things "nerd-dom" had audience members clamoring for tickets and would become an interesting test for "episodic theatrical experiences". We hope to bring the show back soon to a new venue.

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2018 also saw the rebrand of our company from Calendar Boys Productions to IndieWorks Theatre Company for which I still currently serve as Producing Artistic Director alongside Jeremy Terry as Managing Director.

 

Over our first year as IndieWorks, I was lead producer for two simultaneous productions in the New York Theatre Festival, Empty Frames and Casper, the Not-So-Friendly Ghost (both playing to sold-out houses and standing ovations), a "two-man cabaret show experience" written and developed with my close collaborator (and even closer friend), Michael Perrie, Jr. called, Songs from a Hat, (awfully hilarious and hilariously awful, but like... in the best way), our inaugural Summer Cabaret Series at NYC's famed Duplex Cabaret featuring four shows (Kit Goldstein Grant & Friends!, Dirty Little Ditties, an encore performance of Songs from a Hat, and a concert version of one of our musicals currently in development, Saxe and the City: The Music & Lyrics of Peter Saxe.)

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At the end of 2019, I lead produced and directed IndieWorks' first Off-Broadway musical, Kit Goldstein Grant's The Giant Hoax at 42nd Street's Theatre Row. The new family musical packed the house for its three week run and earned rave reviews from critics and audience members alike. 

 

In December 2019, Jeremy and I optioned and executive produced an idea by long time collaborator, Jonathon Lynch, for a podcast that would showcase 10-20 minute musicals and feature a talkback with the writers so that audiences could get to know more about them and their work. Together, along with producer, Andrew Fox, we created Bite-Sized Broadway: A Mini-Musical Podcast, a series which featured fully produced radio plays by eighteen writers from around the world, complete with lush orchestrations, live musicians, and top talent from Broadway, The West End, Hollywood and beyond (including Constantine Maroulis, Ann Harada, Telly Leung, Karen Mason, Gabrielle Ruiz, Thom Sesma, Alan H. Green, J.Elaine Marcos, and many more!) all completely produced and recorded remotely during the Covid-19 pandemic.

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Bite-Sized Broadway quickly grew in popularity with thousands of listeners from over 20 countries worldwide and earned a two nominations from the 2020 Discover Pods Awards (Best Music, People's Choice) and in 2021, won a Webby Award Honor for Arts & Culture Podcast, three W3 Awards (Gold: Entertainment Podcast Series, Remote Production Series; Silver: Scripted Fiction Series) and Best In Show from the Davey Awards for Best Use of Music.

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I still continue to look for projects, both with IndieWorks Theatre Company and independently, that provoke, challenge, excite, and entertain me, and that will give me, my artists, and my audience another reason to fall in love with the theatre all over again! So do you have an idea? Let's collaborate!