Theater Latté Da Commissions New Musical SHE'S COME UNDONE

Theater Latté Da has announced the commission and first workshop of the new musical She's Come Undone, with music and lyrics by Michael Holland and a book co-written by Darrah Cloud and David Simpatico. Based on novelist Wally Lamb's extraordinary, #1 New York Times best-selling coming-of-age odyssey, this story invites us to hitch a wild ride on a journey of love, pain, and renewal with the most heartbreakingly comical heroine to come along in years. At once a fragile girl and a hard-edged cynic, so tough to love yet so inimitably lovable, Dolores is as poignantly real as our own imperfections. 

The New York-based writing team will be in residence in Minneapolis for a private workshop the week of February 5, exploring an initial draft with a developmental creative team and cast including music director Jason Hansen, Director of New Work Elissa Adams, actors Erin Capello Kopp, Emily Gunyou Halaas, Olivia Kemp, Ryan London Levin, Sara Masterson, Eric Morris, Janet Paone, Janet Trow, and Evan Tyler Wilson, and guitarist Kyle Baker. Joelle Coutu is the stage manager.

The novel She's Come Undone was selected as the fourth book for Oprah's Book Club in December 1996. Lamb's novel was named a finalist for the 1992 Los Angeles Book Awards' Art Seidenbaum Prize for first fiction and has been translated into eighteen languages.

“I'm thrilled  to continue Theater Latté Da's commitment to supporting and developing new musical theater with this commission,' says Theater Latté Da's Director of New Work, Elissa Adams. ''David Simpatico and Michael Holland were the creative force behind our world premiere production of Twelve Angry Men: A New Musical and we're delighted to be working with them again. They are joined by veteran playwright Darrah Cloud and together they are the perfect team to bring Wally Lamb's beloved novel to the stage.” 

She's Come Undone is one of eleven projects currently under development as part of Theater Latté Da's NEXT 25x25 initiative to support the development of 25 new musicals and plays with music by the end of 2025. NEXT 25x25 builds on the success of the previous NEXT 20/20 campaign, which supported the development of 20 new works between 2016 and 2020. Visit www.latteda.org/next-25x25 for more information about current projects in development.

Under the leadership of Director of New Work Elissa Adams, Theater Latté Da's NEXT new work development program works with writers and their projects at all stages of creation through commissions, residencies, workshops, the annual NEXT Festival of New Musicals, and full productions. Since its founding in 1998, Theater Latté Da has brought artists together to create new work, resulting in sixteen world premieres, including some of our most memorable and celebrated productions. World premiere productions include: All Is Calm: The Christmas Truce Of 1914, Twelve Angry Men: A New Musical, Five Points, Christmas At The Local, We Shall Someday, To Let Go And Fall, Underneath The Lintel, Lullaby, C., Passage Of Dreams, Bankrupt City Ballad, Knock!, New York Musical Shorts, A Christmas Carole Petersen, and Oh S#!% I'm Turning Into My Mother.

Creator Bios

Darrah Cloud  (Co-Book Writer) is currently working on the book for the musical adaptation of Wally Lamb's She's Come Undone with David Simpatico and Michael Holland, as well as Mcqueen: The Imaginary Life of Alexander McQueen, a commission from Ark/Live Nation Productions. Her musical version of the Willy Holtzman play, SABINA, (lyrics) opened April 2022 at Portland Stage. Her play, TURNING, about the 1936 Olympic women's gymnastic team, was produced at Centenary Stage in March of 2021. Other productions include: Our Suburb (premiere Theater J, Washington, DC), Joan The Girl OF ARC (Cincinnati Playhouse, then toured), What's Bugging Greg?, The Stick Wife, The Mud Angel, Dream House, Braille Garden and The Sirens. Her musicals, written with composer Kim D. Sherman, include Heartland, (Madison Repertory Theatre, The Majestic Theatre in Dallas, TheatreWorks Palo Alto) The Boxcar Children (Theatreworks USA, tour), Honor Song For Crazy Horse (TheatreWorks Palo Alto) and the stage adaptation of Willa Cather's O Pioneers!, which has received over 100 productions in the United States and was filmed starring Mary McDonnell for American Playhouse. She has won numerous awards, including the Macy's Prize for Theatre for Young Audiences, an NEA and a Rockefeller, and has had over 10 movies-of-the-week produced on CBS and NBC. She is a proud alum of the Iowa Writers Workshop and New Dramatists, and co-directs Howl Playwrights in Rhinebeck, NY. She teaches at Goddard College, is a Trustee of Dutchess Community College and the former Town Supervisor of Pine Plains, NY.

Michael Holland  (Music and Lyrics) Orchestrations/vocal arrangements: Godspell (Broadway revival); The Ugly Xmas Sweater Musical (TUTS, 2023); Farah Alvin: On Vinyl (2023 recording); You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown (Cincinnati Playhouse); Emma: A Pop Musical (Broadway Licensing). Music and lyrics: Twelve Angry Men: A New Musical (2021 World Premiere, Theater Latté Da,Minneapolis; Asolo Rep, Sarasota, Spring 2024); You're Gonna Hate This (Joe's Pub; Feinstein's 54 Below, NYC); Hurricane (NYMF). Incidental music: Dallas Theater Center, Alley Theater, Old Globe, Playwrights Horizons, Bay Street Theater, others.

David Simpatico  (Co-Book Writer) has been presented at major theatres around the globe, including London's Hammersmith Apollo, Williamstown Theatre Festival, Lincoln Center/Avery Fisher Hall, Edinburgh Fringe Festival, Franklin Furnace and New York Public Theatre.

Career highlights include: The Screams of Kitty Genovese, (winner Jonathan Larson Award; music by Will Todd); book/stage adaptation of Disney's High School Musical; libretto for choral symphony, Garden of Light (composer Aaron Jay Kernis). Current plays include: Ex-Gay Bar; Wilde about Whitman; Waiting for the Ball to Drop; The Last Supper. 

His musical adaptation of Twelve Angry Men, music and lyrics by Michael Holland, received its world premiere production in June, 2022 at Theater Latté Da in Minneapolis, directed by Peter Rothstein. His grand opera, The Life and Death(s) of Alan Turing, with music by Justine F. Chen, received its world premiere at Chicago Opera Theater in March, 2023, also directed by Peter Rothstein. In January, 2023, David directed a concert presentation of his new jazz opera, That HellBound Train, with composer Lisa DeSpain, at the National Opera Center in New York City and looks forward to a first piano-vocal workshop with conductor Stephanie Rhodes Russell at the University of North Texas, Jan, 2024. 

David is an alumnus of the Composer Librettist Development Program at American Lyric Theater. He holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Southern New Hampshire University. He has received support from Edward Albee Foundation, Millay Colony, NY Theatre Workshop, Eugene O'Neill Foundation and Rhinebeck Writer's Retreat.  David is a proud member of the Dramatists Guild, and with playwright Darrah Cloud, is co-founder of A Howl of Playwrights in Rhinebeck, NY, where he lives with his husband and muse, Robert C. Strickstein.

Theater Latté Da is the leading nonprofit professional theater in the Twin Cities that exclusively produces musical theater. Since our inception, TLD has presented 92 Mainstage productions, including 14 world premieres and 14 area premieres. Each has garnered critical acclaim and earned its artists and TLD a host of awards, including: seven IVEY Awards for overall excellence, National Endowment for the Arts, the Gabriel Award for Broadcast Excellence, the American Theater Wing National Theater Company Award and 2019 Drama Desk Award for Unique Theatrical Experience.

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