New Works Provincetown Commissions Projects From Hannah Corneau, Douglas Lyons & More

New Works Provincetown has commissioned its next slate of projects, including work from Mona Mansour, Hannah Corneau, Douglas Lyons, Craig Lucas, Daniel Messé, Nathan Tysen, Mindi Dickstein and Carmel Dean. Cortale was recently announced as one of the lead producers for the Broadway premiere of Days of Wine and Roses.

 

The new projects include:

 

BEAUTIFUL LITTLE FOOL 

Book by Mona Mansour 

Music and Lyrics by Hannah Corneau

Directed by Michael Greif. 

 

A developmental workshop took place this past August with Jessie Mueller, Damon Daunno and Hannah Corneau.  This new musical is inspired by the extraordinary union of Zelda and F. Scott Fitzgerald. 

 

TABLE 17 

A new play by Douglas Lyons.

 

A first reading is set to take place at The Art House in Provincetown, MA on September 23, 2023 directed by Zhailon Levingston and a cast that includes Danyel Fulton, Carter Redwood and Michael Rishawn.

 

After calling off their engagement, Jada and Dallas haven’t spoken or seen each other in two whole years - until tonight. Who's moved on? Who's still holding on? Looks like we'll find out. 

 

LOVE IS STRANGE

Book by Craig Lucas

Music by Daniel Messé 

Lyrics by Nathan Tysen & Daniel Messé

Directed by Michael Greif. 

 

A first writers' retreat took place in Provincetown in July 2023 with a second slated for January 2024. Love Is Strange is based on the 2014 Ira Sachs film of the same name. 

 

The previously announced new musical MAIDEN VOYAGE, by composer Carmel Dean and lyricist/playwright Mindi Dickstein, continued development with a March 2023 workshop. This workshop was directed by Adrienne Campbell-Holt and with a cast that included Kate Baldwin, George Abud and Chris Innvar. 

 

The show is inspired by the thrilling story of visionary skipper Tracy Edwards and her crew of women who made history as the first ever all-female racing team to compete in the Whitbread Round The World Yacht Race.

 

Cortale, who recently completed his 12th and final season as Producing Artistic Director of The Art House in Provincetown, began an auspicious partnership with Jonathan Murray and Harvey Reese (Wild Oak Media) in 2020. Mr. Murray, as half of television’s legendary Bunim/Murray Productions, is widely credited for inventing the modern reality television genre, including creating and/or executive producing the groundbreaking shows “The Real World,” “Keeping Up With The Kardashians,” “Project Runway” and the Emmy Award-winning “Born This Way,” among others. Together with his partner, Harvey Reese, they have been longtime supporters and investors in theater, including Standing on Ceremony: The Gay Marriage Plays and Motherhood Out Loud. 

 

“It's been an incredible first three years for New Works Provincetown" said Mark Cortale. “P-Town is known as the birthplace of American theatre and it has been thrilling to commission and develop exciting new projects here.  There's something truly magical about this place that inspires creativity and it's a privilege to bring great writers here to experience that firsthand.”

 

New Works Provincetown is sponsored by the Provincetown Arts Society, The Anchor Inn, The Brasswood Inn and The Commons. 

 

BIOGRAPHIES:
 

Carmel Dean

(Composer/Lyricist, Musical Director & Arranger) is an Australian-born musician based in New York. Her compositional debut, Renascence, (with a book by Tony Award-nominee Dick Scanlan) was recently produced Off-Broadway by the acclaimed theatre company Transport Group, and subsequently won the 2018 Off-Broadway Alliance Award for Best New Musical. Her song cycle Well-Behaved Women, about bad-ass, game-changing historical women, premiered at Joe’s Pub in January 2020 to sold-out performances, and is soon to be licensed by Concord Theatricals.  As a Broadway Musical Director/Supervisor and/or Arranger, Carmel’s credits include If/Then (starring Idina Menzel), American Idiot, Hands on a Hardbody, and The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee. She is the Musical Supervisor/Arranger/Co-Orchestrator of the upcoming Broadway musical The Notebook (with a score by Ingrid Michaelson). Other roles include Vocal Arranger for jam-band Phish and Trey Anastasio (Madison Square Garden; Las Vegas; Chicago’s Wrigley Field); performer with Green Day on the 52nd Annual Grammy Awards; and former musical director for Broadway legend Chita Rivera. Carmel is a Fulbright Scholar, holds an MFA from New York University’s Graduate Musical Theatre Writing Program, and is a current member of the BMI Lehman Engel Musical Workshop.

 

Mindi Dickstein 

is an award-winning lyricist, librettist, and playwright. She is perhaps best known as the lyricist for the Broadway musical Little Women, which has been performed worldwide. She is currently writing lyrics for Benny & Joon, based on the MGM film, which had its world premiere at The Old Globe Theater, and for The Little Prince, a multimedia musical which will premiere internationally in 2024-2025.  Recent projects include book and lyrics for Trip, commissioned by Playwrights Horizons in New York, book for Toy Story - The Musical for Disney, and two short plays written for Climate Change Theater Action, a biannual event in support of heightening awareness of the worldwide climate change crisis. Her short story, The Essential Guide to Happiness, written for the collection Hello Winter, is now available on Amazon.com. Mindi’s work has been developed at NAMT, Theatreworks Silicon Valley, Second Stage, The Women’s Project, Playwrights Horizons, Rhinebeck Writer’s Retreat, and The Goodspeed Johnny Mercer Colony. Her work has been performed widely at such venues as The Kennedy Center, Lincoln Center’s American Songbook (Hear and Now: Contemporary Lyricists), The Dramatists Guild’s Great Writer’s Thank Their Lucky Stars, The Lilly Awards, and 54 Below. She has received a Larson Foundation Award, Massachusetts Artists and New York Foundation for the Arts Playwriting Fellowships, the Second Stage Constance Klinsky Award for Excellence in Musical Theatre, and a PEN International New Playwright Award (selected by Wendy Wasserstein). She was an Oscar Hammerstein Fellow at the NYU Graduate Musical Theater Writing program, where she received her MFA and now serves on the faculty.

 

Mona Mansour

is a Lebanese-American playwright and TV writer. Her credits include Unseen (Mosaic Theater, Washington, D.C., Oregon Shakespeare Festival), The Vagrant Trilogy at The Public Theater (New York Times Critic Pick) and Mosaic Theater; The Way West (Steppenwolf, Labyrinth), and We Swim, We Talk, We Go to War (Golden Thread). She conceived of the play Beginning Days of True Jubilation, about a start-up gone bust, with the theater company SOCIETY, which she co-founded with Scott Illingworth and Tim Nicolai. With Tala Manassah she has written Falling Down the Stairs.Their play Dressing is part of Facing Our Truths: Short Plays about Trayvon, Race and Privilege. She started as an actor, performing in the famed Groundlings Sunday Company in Los Angeles. As a writer, she got her start when she was chosen to be part of The Public’s Emerging Writers Group in 2009.  Awards and fellowships include an award in Literature from the Academy of Arts and Letters; the Kesselring Prize; the Helen Merrill Award for Playwriting; the Whiting Award; Macdowell and New Dramatists. Mona was a writer and producer for NBC’s long-running series New Amsterdam and has created a series set in the Middle East for Waleed and Joana Zuaiter’s FlipNarrative.

 

Hannah Corneau

An artist from New York, Hannah Corneau blends genres with her sweeping vocal range. With origins from the theatrical world, storytelling is paramount within her composition and artistic expression. Hannah made her Broadway debut as Elphaba in Wicked on Broadway. She has also starred as Edna St. Vincent Millay in the critically-acclaimed Transport Group production of Renascence. Previously, she traveled around the country as Yitzhak in the First National Tour of Hedwig and The Angry Inch. She is thrilled her original show, 'beautiful little fool' is currently in development. @hannahcorneau 

 

 

Douglas Lyons

is a multi-hyphenate artist. His Broadway acting credits include The Book of Mormon, the Original Cast of Beautiful and the Tony Award-winning Broadway revival of Parade. Douglas has also toured in Rent, Dreamgirls and The Book of Mormon. As a writer, he earned a GLAAD nomination for his Broadway playwriting debut, Chicken and Biscuits, which was the 2nd most produced play in America in 2022-23. Douglas served as a writer on both seasons of Apple TV's Emmy award winning series “Fraggle Rock.” As a composer-lyricist, his music and lyrics have been featured on Nickelodeon, BET Plus, Apple TV, CBS's Sunday Morning Show, and more. His musicals include Polkadots (Off-Broadway Alliance Winner Best Family Show, Atlantic Theater Company), Beau (Adirondack Theatre Festival), Breathe (Audible), The Moon and The Sea (Constellation Stage) and the world premiere of Five Points (Theater Latté Da.) With composing partner Ethan D. Pakchar, Douglas is a 2020 Jonathan Larson Grant finalist.

 

Craig Lucas

wrote the plays Blue Window, Change Agent, The Dying Gaul, God’s Heart, I Was Most Alive with You, The Lying Lesson, Missing Persons, Reckless, Prayer for My Enemy, Ode to Joy, Prelude to a Kiss, The Singing Forest, Small Tragedy, Stranger; books for the musicals Amélie, An American in Paris, Days of Wine and Roses, The Light in the Piazza, Marry Me A Little, Three Postcards; screenplays for Blue Window, Longtime Companion, Prelude to a Kiss, Reckless, The Dying Gaul, Secret Lives of Dentists; the opera libretti for Orpheus in Love, Two Boys; and the ballet libretto for Christopher Wheeldon’s Cinderella. He directed world premieres of The Light in the Piazza, I Was Most Alive With You, Ode to Joy, Change Agent & This Thing of Darkness (co-author David Schulner) and Harry Kondoleon’s plays Saved or Destroyed & Play Yourself & the movies The Dying Gaul & Birds of America. He received the Excellence in Literature Award from the American Academy of Arts & Letters, Drama Desk, Obie, L.A. Drama Critics, Laura Pels/PEN Mid-career, LAMBDA Literary, Hull-Warriner, Sundance Audience, Flora Roberts, Madge Evans-Sidney Kingsley & the Steinberg/ACTA Best Play & the Hermitage Greenfield Prize among other honors.

 

Daniel Messé

is the founder and principal songwriter of the band Hem, which began in 2001 with their debut album, Rabbit Songs. In 2009, The Public Theater tapped Hem to score their Shakespeare in the Park production of Twelfth Night (starring Anne Hathaway and Audra McDonald, directed by Daniel Sullivan) for which they earned a Drama Desk Nomination. Along with Craig Lucas (book) and Nathan Tysen (co-lyrics), Daniel wrote the music and lyrics for the musical adaptation of the French film Amélie, which debuted on Broadway in 2017 (directed by Pam McKinnon) and was re-conceived for the UK (directed by Michael FentimanIn), earning three Olivier Award nominations (including one for Best New Musical) and a Grammy Award nomination for Best Musical Theatre Album. Daniel has written four musicals for TheatreWorks USA with collaborator Mindi Dickstein (book, lyrics). Awards for theatre include a Jonathan Larson Grant from the American Theatre Wing, the ASCAP/Frederick Loewe Award, and a Kleban Award for lyrics. Currently, Daniel is at work on a new theatrical song cycle inspired by Twain’s Huck Finn(You Don’t Know About Me Without You). He is also working together again with Craig Lucas (book) along with Sean Hartley (co-lyrics) on adapting Craig’s play, Prelude to a Kiss, for South Coast Rep. Education includes a BA from Carleton College and an MFA from NYU’s Tisch Graduate Musical Theatre Writing Program.

 

Nathan Tysen

Broadway: Paradise Square (Tony Nomination), Amélie, Tuck Everlasting. West End: Amélie (Olivier & Grammy Nominations). Off-Broadway: The Burnt Part Boys, Fugitive Songs, Stars of David. Regional: Dreamland (or a musical riff on Shakespeare’s Midsummer set during the declassification of Area 51), Stillwater, The Mysteries of Harris Burdick, two circuses for Ringling Bros. Barnum & Bailey. TV/Film: A Killer Party, Sesame Street (Emmy Nomination), Elmo’s World, The Electric Company. Upcoming: The Great Gatsby, Love is Strange, Blown Sideways Through Life, Revival, The Untitled Joe Hill Project. Awards from the Kleban, Ebb, Rodgers, and Larson Foundations. Writer and director for Lovewell Institute, creating original musicals with young adults. MFA NYU Graduate Musical Theatre Writing Program, BFA Missouri State Univ. Husband to writer Kait Kerrigan, father to Lucy and Tess. www.nathantysen.com

 

Michael Greif

Notable productions on and off Broadway include: The Low Road, f-ing A, Dogeaters, Giant, The Intelligent Homosexual’s Guide, Romeo and Juliet, Machinal at The Public and Delacorte; Our Lady of Kibeho, A Few Stout Individuals, Landscape of the Body, Angels in America at NY’s Signature Theater; Dear Evan Hansen, Next to Normal (also Arena Stage and Broadway), A Parallelogram, Make Believe at Second Stage; Grey Gardens (also Broadway), Far From Heaven, Spatter Pattern at Playwrights Horizons; Street Scene, Therese Raquin, The Cherry Orchard at Williamstown Theater Festival; and Rent at the New York Theater Workshop and Broadway. Most recently, he, along with Schele Williams, co-directed the critically acclaimed musical adaption of The Notebook at Chicago Shakespeare Theater.

 

 

Wild Oak Media, incorporated by Jonathan Murray and Harvey Reese, invests in documentaries and theater. New Works Provincetown is its first theatrical investment. Murray’s documentary credits include Autism: The Musical (Emmy Award), Valentine Road, They Call Us Monsters, Waiting for Chechnya, and TransHood. Reese’s documentary credits include Halston, and Waiting for Chechnya.  

 

Mark Cortale is currently producing the critically acclaimed new musical Days of Wine and Roses with music and lyrics by Adam Guettel, book by Craig Lucas and directed by Michael Greif - which opens on Broadway on January 28th at Studio 54.  He produced the Drama Desk and Lucille Lortel nominated Off-Broadway musical Midnight At The Never Get by Mark Sonnenblick. He recently celebrated his twelfth and final season as Producing Artistic Director of The Art House in Provincetown where he presented artists that included Patti LuPone, Audra McDonald, Sutton Foster, Jessie Mueller, Christine Ebersole and Megan Mullally. In 2020, he founded the developmental theatre lab New Works Provincetown. In conjunction with producing partners Jonathan Murray and Harvey Reese, Mark has commissioned five works to date including the following shows currently in development: Maiden Voyage with book and lyrics by Mindi Dickstein and music by Carmel Dean, Beautiful Little Fool with book by Mona Mansour and music and lyrics by Hannah Corneau, Love Is Strange, with book by Craig Lucas, music by Daniel Messé and lyrics by Nathan Tysen & Daniel Messé and Table 17 by Douglas Lyons.