POP! Playwright Maggie-Kate Coleman & Composer Anna K. Jacobs Set for Post-Show Talkback, 8/2

POP! BANG! POP! FIREHOUSE THEATRE continues its run of the Andy Warhol musical with post-show talkbacks featuring POP! composer Anna K. Jacobs Friday, August 2nd and playwright Maggie-Kate Coleman Saturday, August 3rd.

"I am thrilled," says Jacobs about the musical being performed in Richmond. "It sounds like Firehouse Theatre is a one-of-a-kind venue - perhaps a bit Factory-esque? - so I'm really looking forward to experiencing the show in that space. Because POP! is a new musical, each production reveals new layers and colors I'd never seen before. I'm looking forward to seeing this cast in action and learning something new about each of their characters."

"I don't know if the Andy in POP! was anything like the real Andy Warhol," explains Maggie-Kate Coleman, the playwright of POP!. "Hopefully it's obvious once you've seen it, but POP! is definitely not meant to be seen as biographical realism in any way. In writing, I was interested in examining what might happen when a person can only relate to or perhaps even love other people by turning them into works of art. I think much of the world we live in today is, for better or for worse, strongly rooted in the world Andy created. Facebook and Twitter feeds basically read like Andy's diaries. You turn on the television and you have a million "reality" TV options, or you go to the grocery store and you can see magazines covered with people famous for literally nothing! It makes me think about how all that celebrity worship and superficiality may be connected to some deeper and more human need to turn the things we hate about ourselves into things that can be glorified. Which in turn makes me feel slightly less guilty about rifling through an US Weekly in a waiting room. Mostly I hope that audiences will have a great time and really enjoy themselves."

Anna K. Jacobs, who composed the music for POP!, is one of Ars Nova's 2013 Uncharted Artists and a 2010-11 Dramatists Guild Fellow, and has partnered as an educator with institutions including Metropolitan Opera Guild, New York Musical Theatre, and Emerson College. Originally from Sydney, Australia and a graduate of University of Sydney and NYU, Jacobs' musicals have been developed and produced by Yale Rep and the Yale Institute for Music Theatre, Pittsburgh City Theatre, Studio Theatre, Sydney Theatre Company, and NYU. Currently she is working on a musical adaptation of the cult horror film, Teeth.

Maggie-Kate Coleman, the bookwriter and lyricist of POP!, is a graduate of Ithaca College, received an MFA in Musical Theatre Writing from NYU's Tisch School of the Arts and trained at the National Theater Institute at Eugene O'Neill Theater Center. Originally from Hagerstown, Maryland, Coleman's other musical include From a Child, rainsong and Memento Mori. She is currently collaborating on other theatrical productions in New York City.

Tickets for POP! are $15-$32 and are available online at www.firehousetheatre.org, by phone at (804) 355-2001, and in person at the Firehouse Theatre Box Office (1609 W. Broad Street).

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