Jeannette
A New Musical
Music and Lyrics by Ari Afsar, Book by Lauren M. Gunderson and Jordan Ealey

ABOUT Jeannette

An epic pop musical based on the true story of America’s first congresswoman, Jeannette electrifies the life and history of suffrage activist, social worker and Montanan, Jeannette Rankin. Elected to Congress in 1916—three years before women are granted the right to vote—Jeannette finds herself to be the only female voice within the halls of power to vote on women’s suffrage. Written by America’s most produced playwright Lauren M. Gunderson and pop sensation Ari Afsar, Jeannette heralds one person’s radical voice in America’s ongoing journey toward equal rights for all.

Our hero, Jeannette Rankin, is as smart as a whip, with a Montanan’s penchant for big dreams and a politician’s penchant for getting what she wants. She knows how to play the game. She knows how to get shit done. But in her quiet moments she wants what we all want; love, intimacy, to be known for who she truly is. She loved women, but always prioritized winning over love. Her sister is her rock. As is her rich and powerful brother, who ultimately comes to betray her. And though she rejects proposals of marriage by Fiorello LaGuardia, they prove that deep friendship might be better than marriage for unshakably ambitious people.

But like all heroes, ours is fallible, vulnerable, and lonely. For a pacifist, she really loves a good fight and makes enemies as quickly as she can soothe them. Suffragettes don’t resolutely love her either, a fact she can’t swallow without bitterness. Her only recourse is to do what she’s always done: play the game, never show weakness, get it done and prove them all wrong.

New and original songs by Ari will put us inside the hearts of our feminist revolutionaries as well as in the streets marching with thousands, on the campaign trail, in the family home of our heroine, and speaking up for women’s rights in the halls of Congress.

Congresswoman Rankin boldly paved the way for resistance through law and government. She was not only the first woman to win a place in American federal congress, but the first woman in the democratic Western world to be voted into national office. She knew how to work the system and had to fight like hell to make it happen. She didn’t win every fight and she didn’t come out a national hero, but she made a difference in Congress, in women’s rights, and to the thousands of women who wrote to her saying, “I have never had a woman politician to write to. I think you will understand.”

Jeannette Rankin’s story is untold. This is her time.

 

Photographs: Isaak Berliner

THE TEAM

ARI AFSAR
CREATOR/COMPOSER + LYRICIST
Ari Afsar is a singer/songwriter with placements on ABC, Disney, and an On-Demand feature. A graduate of Ethnomusicology Jazz from UCLA, Afsar just released her debut EP, “Somewhere I Thought I’d Be.” Most recently she opened for Michelle Obama at the Shrine Auditorium, performed at the U.S. Institute of Peace, and opened for the ACLU national conference in D.C. She was the original Eliza Hamilton in Chicago’s production of Hamilton, Miss California 2010, top 10 at Miss America 2011, a top 36 American Idol Alum, and currently stars in a SXSW-award winning series. She has been an advocate/performer/and public speaker for The Women’s March, The Social Innovation Summit, Nexus Global, The University of Chicago, The MoveOn rally on the steps of the U.S. Supreme Court, and The United State of Women. 

LAUREN M. GUNDERSON
CO-BOOKWRITER
Lauren M. Gunderson was recently announced as the most produced playwright in America. She is a two-time winner of the Steinberg/ATCA New Play Award (for I and You and The Book of Will), winner of the Lanford Wilson Award and the Otis Guernsey New Voices Award. She is also a finalist for the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize and John Gassner Award for Playwriting, and a recipient of the Mellon Foundation’s 3-Year Residency with Marin Theatre Company where she is the Playwright in Residence. She studied Southern Literature and Drama at Emory University, and Dramatic Writing at NYU’s Tisch School where she was a Reynolds Fellow in Social Entrepreneurship. Her work has been commissioned, produced and developed at companies across the US and UK. She co-authored Miss Bennet: Christmas at Pemberley with Margot Melcon, which was one of the most produced plays in America in 2017. Her work is published at Playscripts (I and You, Exit Pursued By A Bear, The Taming, and Toil And Trouble), Dramatists (The Revolutionists, The Book of Will, Silent Sky, Bauer, Miss Bennet) and Samuel French (Emilie). Her picture book Dr Wonderful: Blast Off to the Moon is now available on Amazon and she is working on a major motion picture. http://www.laurengunderson.com and @LalaTellsAStory.

JORDAN EALEY
CO-BOOKWRITER
Jordan Ealey (they/she) is a scholar-artist based in the DC-area, but will always and forever be a Georgia peach. Currently, Jordan is a doctoral candidate in Theatre and Performance Studies at the University of Maryland, College Park. Their dissertation project investigates the politics, forms, and aesthetics of black women-authored musicals from the nineteenth-century to the present. Rather than examining these musicals as a part of the musical theatre canon, they, instead, argue for them as a legitimate form of black feminist intellectual production. Jordan’s scholarly writing has been published in The Black Scholar and Girlhood Studies, with reviews in Theatre Journal, Frontiers: Augmented, Studies in Musical Theatre, and Theatre Topics. They are also currently working as an Assistant Editor for Dr. Laura Edmondson at Theatre Journal. Jordan earned a B.A. in Theatre and English from Wesleyan College and an M.A. in Theatre and Performance Studies from the University of Maryland, College Park. Additionally, Jordan is a publicly engaged scholar and practitioner, demonstrated through her creative practice, arts journalism and criticism, and podcast creation and production. As such, Jordan is the co-host and co-producer of Daughters of Lorraine, a podcast on black theatre through a black feminist lens, which is supported by HowlRound Theatre Commons. Additionally, Jordan is a recurring co-host on On TAP: A Theatre and Performance Studies Podcast. They are also a freelance dramaturg, playwright, and arts critic.

ERIN ORTMAN
CO-DIRECTOR
Erin is a NYC–based director, creator, and equalist. She directed two widely recognized Off-Broadway productions in 2018-2019, One Thousand Nights and One Day by Marisa Michaelson and Jason Grote, and Real by Rodrigo Noguiera. She is developing new work with Tony Award winning producer Adam Zotavich, Obie Lifetime Achievement recipient Caridad Svich, Tony Award nominee Alexander Gemignani, Extraordinary Achievement Visa recipient Rodrigo Noguiera and Ugandan playwright Jedidiah Maguraru, currently at the U.N. She is directing Jeannette by Lauren M. Gunderson and Ari Afsar, which received extensive development at The Eugene O’Neill Musical Theatre Conference this summer. Her current concert work includes Hear Her Song, a series of songs written by women serving as acts of resistance, which will be playing Joe’s Pup and The Kennedy Center in 2020, as well as Jeannette in Concert. She has developed new plays and musicals with many acclaimed theatre companies including The Roundabout, LAByrinth, Ars Nova, Pipeline, Pan Asian Rep, The Prospect Theater Company, New Georges, New York Stage and Film, The Ensemble Studio Theatre, The Sheen Center and The Lincoln Center Director’s Lab, among others.

YUSHA MARIE-SORZANO
CO-DIRECTOR
Originally hailing from the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago, Yusha-Marie Sorzano is a relentless, dynamic performing artist, choreographer, educator and leader in the dance world. She is currently a member of Camille A. Brown & Dancers and is founding co-artistic director of the newly formed Zeitgeist Dance Theatre, as well as serving as Associate Director for Program Development with Francisco Gella Dance Works. Concurrently, she teaches ballet as special faculty at the California Institute for the Arts and is at work as choreographer for Jeannette, a new musical.

SHEELA RAMESH
MUSICAL DIRECTOR
Sheela Ramesh is a music director/composer/arranger with a passion for stories and sounds that have traditionally been marginalized, and a mission to use art as a force for social justice. Since moving to NYC in mid-2021, Sheela has worked on The Karate Kid (music director: Andrew Resnick), Annie Live! on N.B.C. (music director: Stephen Oremus), Bliss (music director: Julie McBride), We Won’t Sleep (music supervisors: Mary-Mitchell Campbell and Meg Zervoulis), SIX on Broadway (music director: Julia Schade), Diamond Alice (Fiasco Theater), and Moulin Rouge on Broadway (music director: Julie McBride); music directed and co-orchestrated the world premiere of Group! (Passage Theatre); and contributed orchestrations to Jessica Vosk’s My Golden Age concert at Carnegie Hall (music director: Mary-Mitchell Campbell). Based in the Bay Area until mid-2021, she has also worked with Maestra Music, Stanford University, Contra Costa Civic Theatre, Youth Musical Theater Company, Musical Cafe, Theatre Rhinoceros, Inferno Theatre, and more.

MARY-MITCHELL CAMPBELL
CO-MUSIC SUPERVISOR
A 1996 Furman University graduate, Mary-Mitchell Campbell has served as Music Director for Broadway’s Mean Girls, The Prom, and Kristin Chenoweth: My Love Letter to Broadway, and prepared orchestrations for Sweet Charity starring Sutton Foster. She has also lent music direction and orchestrations to Tuck Everlasting, Finding Neverland, Company (Drama Desk Award win for Orchestrations), and Allegro (Drama Desk Award nomination for Orchestrations) among many others. Also to Campbell’s credit are numerous philanthropic efforts including her founding of ASTEP-Artists Striving to End Poverty. Performers for the star-studded gala in February included Chenoweth, Jonathan Groff, Tituss Burgess, Debra Monk, and Raúl Esparza.

MEG ZERVOULIS
CO-MUSIC SUPERVISOR
Meg Zervoulis is a versatile music director, arranger, educator, and pianist in the NYC/NJ area. Broadway: The Prom (Music Director), Mean Girls, Natasha, Pierre, and the Great Comet of 1812, Head Over Heels. Other Selected New Works: Buñuel (Public Theatre) by Stephen Sondheim, Kooman and Dimond’s Dani Girl in the ASCAP/Disney Workshop, Other World by Hunter Bell, Jeff Bowen, and Ann McNamee, Stu for Silverton (NAMT 2014) by Peter Duchan and Breedlove, Teeth (Sundance 2017) by Anna Jacobs and Michael Jackson, and Andrea Grody’s Strange Faces (directed by John Rando). She also helms Hotel Elefant, a chamber ensemble in NYC, and played keyboard for the Big Apple Circus. Meg frequently appears as pianist/bandleader all over the country with the Nunziata Twins (www.willandanthony.com) and Bryce Pinkham. She is also on the rosters of Sing for Hope, Sing for Your Seniors and Concerts in Motion. She has been the musical theatre accompanist for National YoungArts Week for the past two years, in collaboration with Michael McElroy. Meg is a proud member of the Lilly Power Network and Local 802 AFM.  

DEVELOPMENT TIMELINE

PRODUCTION STAFF

FOR MORE INFORMATION ON We Won’t Sleep, PLEASE CONTACT: