THE FLAGMAKERS Documentary Stage Musical Adaptation In the Works

The National Geographic documentary film The Flagmakers is being adapted into a stage musical directed by Saheem Ali.

Deadline reports that John J. Caswell Jr. is adapting the film for the stage. Mark Gordon Pictures executive produced the film and was quick to secure the rights to turn it into a musical.

The film follows the workers at the employee-owned Eder Flag in Oak Creek, WI, which is the country's largest American flag and flagpole maker. They sew and ship 5 million American flags per year.

Made up of locals, immigrants and refugees, the workers wrestle with their identity as they stitch the flags together. The acclaimed documentary short provides a glimpse into the lives of the people that make the country's most recognizable icon.

Saheem Ali is The Public Theater's associate artistic director and helms Fat Ham, which is slated to open on Broadway in 2023. He has also directed Off-Broadway productions of Nollywood Dreams, Fires In the Mirror, The New Englanders, The Rolling Stone, Passage, Fireflies, Sugar In Our Wounds, and Twelfth Night.

Ali assisted on productions in Minneapolis at Theatre de la Jeune Lune and Wintertime at the Guthrie Theater in 2003. Ali was assistant director on several productions in Boston, including Commonwealth Shakespeare Company (CSC) Shakespeare's Henry Vin 2002 and Macbeth in 2003.

He assisted on the operas Powder Her Face in 2003 and Angels in America in 2006 for Opera Boston. He also assisted on The Miser for American Repertory Theater (A.R.T.) in 2004.

In 2009, he was assistant director for Giant and in 2010 for Angels in America, both at Signature Theatre Company. In 2010 he assisted on A Free Man of Color at Lincoln Center Theater and in 2011 for The Normal Heart on Broadway.

In 2014, Ali conducted a workshop on Dominique Morisseau's Facing Our Truths. In 2015, Ali was Associate Director under Michael Greif for The Tempest. In 2017, he conducted a reading of The Unbearable Whiteness of Being, the Jeremy Kamps play, and he directed Twelfth Night for The Mobile Unit and set the action in coastal Florida with Viola and Sebastian as Cuban refugees.

Watch the trailer for the documentary here: