Jill Sobule's F*CK7THGRADE to be Presented at Wild Project in October

wild project will present F*ck7thGrade, music, lyrics, and concept by Jill Sobule, book by Liza Birkenmeier and directed by Lisa Peterson with music direction by Julie Wolf. F*ck7thGrade begins performances on Wednesday, October 12 for a limited engagement through Saturday, November 5. Press Opening is Tuesday, October 18 at 7 p.m. The performance schedule is Tuesday - Thursday at 7 p.m.; Friday - Saturday at 8 p.m. Please note the following schedule adjustments: There are added performances on Monday 10/17 at 7 p.m. and Sunday 10/30 at 8 p.m. Performances are at wild project (195 E. 3rd Street, between Avenues A & B). Single tickets start at $35; all seats are $25 during previews. Tickets go on sale on Tuesday, August 16 and will be available via TheWildProject.org.

An adolescent romance, a brief rise to pop stardom, a queer musical memoir (about how we'll never get out of middle school) conceived by award-winning singer-songwriter Jill Sobule - whose 1990s hits include "Supermodel" and the original "I Kissed a Girl."

The cast and creative team will be announced soon.

wild project is proud to partner with IndieSpaceNYC, home of the @indietheaterfund. The theater will donate 0.05 from every ticket sold to IndieSpace, which provides responsive and equity-focused grants and programming to historically excluded individual artists, small companies, and indie venues in NYC. Visit indiespace.org/nickel to learn more about this program and how IndieSpace is helping Indie Theater thrive during Covid and beyond.

F*ck7thGrade was first workshopped and developed at City Theatre Company, Pittsburgh, PA, as part of the 2018 Momentum Festival, curated by Clare Drobot, Director of New Play Development, and Reginald L. Douglas, Artistic Producer. It was further developed at the Colorado New Play Festival, Steamboat Springs, CO, 2019.

Jill Sobule

Jill Sobule (music, lyrics, and concept) has released a dozen albums spanning three decades of recording, tackling such topics as the death penalty, anorexia nervosa, shoplifting, reproduction, the French Resistance, adolescent malaise, LGBTQ issues, and the Christian Right, to name a few - with her trademark wit and aplomb.

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The Denver-born songwriter/guitarist/singer's work is at once deeply personal and socially conscious, seriously funny and derisively tragic. While her songs cover expansive thematic ground, they benefit greatly from Jill's subtle intelligence and skillful light-handedness. No sloganeering flag-and-fist waving here, but rather portrait-&-story songs about human beings, real and imagined, which allow us to step back from the issues they tackle, be they individual or societal, and to relate to them as we would to a close friend.

On stage, she entertains, amuses, provokes, and more often than not, takes her audiences on an emotional roller coaster, from comedy to pathos in a few bars of music, often within the same song.

Jill Sobule's recording career began in 1990 with the album Things Here Are Different (MCA), produced by Todd Rundgren. Radio took notice thanks to the single's "Too Cool To Fall In Love." Her 1995 self-titled album (Atlantic) brought her mainstream commercial and critical success with two hit singles: the satirical gem "Supermodel" from the movie Clueless and "I Kissed A Girl" (the original), the first-ever openly queer-themed Billboard Top 20 record.

For her most recent album, the Ben Lee-produced Nostalgia Kills, Sobule turned her warm wit and laser-focused poet's eye on herself more than ever before. For all its graceful, funny, and heartbreaking explorations of awkward youth and grown-up regrets, Nostalgia Kills is as of-the-moment as anything in Jill Sobule's catalog. Through her own experiences, she explores issues our society still collectively struggles with (LGBTQ rights, teen mental health, our unhealthy obsession with staying forever young) and gently skewers our tendency to dwell on the past at the expense of addressing the present.

Sobule has performed with Neil Young, Billy Bragg, Steve Earle, Cyndi Lauper, Tom Morello, Warren Zevon, and John Doe. She inducted Neil Diamond into the Songwriter's Hall of Fame. She has shared billing with Don Henley, Joe Jackson, Warren Zevon, the influential LA punk band X, and Lloyd Cole & The Negatives. She regularly co-stars with comedian/actress/author/SNL alumni Julia Sweeney in their Jill & Julia Show, an unusual and mesmerizing combination of song and storytelling. A road warrior, she plays more than 100 shows a year.

In November of 2019, Jill sang a song as herself on an episode of The Simpsons. Most recently, Sobule has been working on two projects: an autobiographical show directed by two-time Obie-winner Lisa Peterson, (titled F**k 7th Grade!) which premiered in May 2020 at Pittsburgh's City Theater.

Liza Birkenmeier

Liza Birkenmeier (book) was the 2019-2020 Tow Playwright-in-Residence at Ars Nova, where her play Dr. Ride's American Beach House premiered. It was a New York Times Critic's Pick and a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award in Drama. Honestly Sincere appeared online in collaboration with TiQ and was also a New York Times Critic's Pick. Please Welcome Our Guest, another digital piece, was created with Trish Harnetiaux, commissioned as part of MTC's Snapshot Series. Islander, a devised work with collaborator KATIE BROOK, premiered live at HERE in August of 2021. Her work has also been developed by NYSAF, The Public Theater, University Settlement, Playwrights Realm, The Orchard Project, Lincoln Center, the San Diego Museum of Art, The Mercury Store, and elsewhere. She is a New Georges Resident Artist, and a Hambidge, Macdowell, and Yaddo Fellow.

Lisa Peterson

Lisa Peterson's (director) is a two-time OBIE Award-winning writer and director. She co-wrote and directed AN ILIAD with Denis O'Hare (NYTW, McCarter Theater, Seattle Rep-Lortel Award Best Solo Performance) and THE GOOD BOOK commissioned and produced by the Court Theatre and Berkeley Rep. She is a Usual Suspect at NYTW where her directing work includes SLAVS by Tony Kushner, TRESTLE AT POPE LICK CREEK by Naomi Wallace, TRAPS and LIGHT SHINING IN BUCKINGHAMSHIRE by Caryl Churchill (OBIE Award for Directing), and THE WAVES (adapted from V. Woolf by Peterson & composer David Bucknam). Her recent directing work includes the world premiere productions of GOOD NIGHT, OSCAR by Doug Wright (Goodman Theater), and THE KIND ONES by Miranda Rose Hall (Magic Theater). Lisa has directed world premieres by Beth Henley, Donald Margulies, Marlane Meyer, Ellen McLaughlin, Jose Rivera, Luis Alfaro, Chay Yew , Fernanda Coppel and many others at the Vineyard, Public, Second Stage, Primary Stages, and WP. She has also directed classic plays at theaters across the country, including the Guthrie, Arena Stage, Yale Rep, Hartford Stage, OSF, Baltimore Center Stage, South Coast Rep, Huntington, and Actors' Theater of Louisville. Lisa has directed regularly at Berkeley Rep, where she was Associate Director for 3 seasons, the Mark Taper Forum, where she was Resident Director for 10 years, and La Jolla Playhouse, where she was Associate Director for 3 years. Upcoming projects: THE SONG OF ROME, written with Denis O'Hare; and THE IDEA OF ORDER, inspired by the poetry of Wallace Stevens and written with Todd Almond. She is a NYTW Usual Suspect and a proud member of SDC. Winner of the Gordon Davidson Award for Lifetime Achievement.

About wild project

wild project, a nonprofit producer and venue, is an innovator among producing companies, supporting the diverse independent theater, film, music, visual arts, and spoken-word artists of New York City. Since 2007, wild project has presented and produced theater that enriches, educates, and unifies its East Village community in an environmentally responsible green space. Located on E. 3rd St. in Manhattan, wild project curates resident companies in its 89-seat theater and devotes specific initiatives toward LGBTQIA+ and BIPOC projects and the work of local East Village artists, to ensure nonprofit theater sustains its roots in the community. wild project places the utmost importance on engendering a climate that supports the artists and cultivates artists who commit to artistic excellence, enrich the community and promote social equity.

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