Raja Feather Kelly To Direct Invite-Only Industry Reading Of SALAAM MEDINA: TALES OF HALFGHAN By Rona Siddiqui

Salaam Medina: Tales of a Halfghan, with book, music and lyrics by Rona Siddiqui, will hold an invited industry reading on November 15, 2019. The reading will be directed by Raja Feather Kelly, with Music Direction by Emily Goldman and Dramaturgy by Jessica Kahkoska.

The cast features Sherz Aletaha, Meetu Chilana, Angel Desai, Layan Elwazani, Jamen Nanthakumar, Jonathan Raviv, and Louis Sallan.

Salaam Medina: Tales of a Halfghan is a zany new vaudevillian musical that follows intrepid "Halfghan," Medina Eskandani, through her trials with body hair, racist cousins, and pesky head scarves as she grapples with what it means to be bi-ethnic in America.

Rona was recently named the recipient of the prestigious Billie Burke Ziegfeld Award for a female composer of musical theatre. She is also the recipient of the ASCAP Foundation Mary Rodgers/Lorenz Hart Award and the ASCAP Foundation/Max Dreyfus Scholarship.

Readings will be held on November 15th at Playwrights Horizons in New York City, and are open by invitation only. For more information, email SalaamMedinaMusical@gmail.com.

Rona Siddiqui is a composer/lyricist based in NYC. Her musical One Good Day (book & lyrics: Liz Suggs) was selected for the ASCAP/DreamWorks Musical Theatre Workshop with Stephen Schwartz. Rona composed the music for an original 20-minute musical about Afghanistan, The Tin (book & lyrics: Zayre Ferrer), which was selected to be part of the Samuel French OOB Short Play Festival. She also wrote the music for Treasure in NYC (book & lyrics: Laura Kleinbaum), an immersive, multi-sensory musical for people of all developmental profiles. She has written pieces for Wicked's 16th Anniversary commemoration, Flying Free, Broadway Inspirational Voices, 24 Hour Musicals, Prospect Theater Company, The Civilians, the NYC Gay Men's Chorus, NYMF, 52nd St Project, and the acclaimed web series Amateur Dicks. She performed her concert Rona Siddiqui: Halfghan on a Mission at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. Original scores she has written regionally include Middletown, The Vagina Monologues, The Good Person of Szechuan, The Clean House, and Love Song of J Robert Oppenheimer. She is the recipient of the ASCAP Foundation Mary Rodgers/Lorenz Hart Award and the ASCAP Foundation/Max Dreyfus Scholarship. She received her Masters from NYU's Graduate Musical Theatre Writing Program. www.ronasiddiqui.com.

Raja Feather Kelly is a choreographer, director, and the artistic director of the feath3r theory and New Brooklyn Theatre. A three-time winner of the Princess Grace Award, Raja is the 2019-2020 Randjelovic/Stryker Resident Commissioned Artist at New York Live Arts, an inaugural Jerome Hill Artist Fellow, a 2019 Creative Capital award recipient, and a resident artist of HERE and Center for Ballet and the Arts at NYU. Raja has been granted a 2019-2021 National Dance Project Production Grant. Over the past decade, Kelly has created thirteen evening-length premieres and six short-format works as well as choreographing extensively for Off-Broadway theatre in New York City, garnering a Breakout Award from SDCF (2018).

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