TURNOVER: A NEW LEAF Comes to The Tank This Month

Subheading: Parsley and Pyrus uproot their families' green cards in this plant-based coming-of-age musical.

The Tank will present Turnover: A New Leaf as part of their 10th Annual PrideFest on Friday, June 28 at 7PM. 312 W 36th St. New York, NY 10018. $28 Tickets: turnovershow.com/events. Instagram: @sciencetheatre

Written by David Quang Pham and directed by Fang Tseng, Turnover: A New Leaf is a plant-based musical set in Dirty City that follows a Vietnamese mother-child pair of Cilantros who run a salon that neighbors the Crabapple family and their FigLeaf Nightclub. When their queer children - Parsley Ram and Pyrus Crabapple - befriend one another and uproot their families' social orders, the plants and transplants discover what it truly means to earn one's green card.

In this coming-of-age story, the musical theater science communicator David Quang Pham plants themes of family dynamics, immigrant assimilation, performative activism, body image, the duality between nature versus nurture, and songs teaching photosynthesis! At Theatre on the Verge's 2024 New Musicals Festival in Philadelphia's Abington Art Center, Turnover: A New Leaf was nominated for Best Musical and won Best Book and Best Director (Aliyah Curry). Queer Theatre Kalamazoo is set to have a production of Turnover: A New Leaf in Judy K. Jolliffe Theatre in the Epic Center from May 16-18, 2025.

Veronica Dang and Max Boone star as Rau Ram and Parsley Ram, a Vietnamese mother-child pair of Cilantros who own the salon named Salontro; John Gallop III and Kimi Handa Brown star as Malus Crabapple and Pyrus Crabapple, an uncle-nibling pair who own the FigLeaf Nightclub; and Erick Carter stars as Mayor Canna Blomquist and DJ Cauliflower. Turnover: A New Leaf features Carla Mongado as the music director, Deniz Demirkurt as the stage manager and designer, Aliyah Curry as the dramaturg, Anna Schultz as the lighting designer, Piper Hill as the sound designer, and Shiana Mainarich as the photographer. The orchestra pit is made up of Ethan Lucas on percussion, Joshua Erickson on piano, Timmy Ong on guitar, and Emerson Cyrus Olson on violin. The concert reading is produced by Caitlin Mayernik (Flower Power writer) and choreographed by Fang Tseng.

Director Fang Tseng was born in Burma and raised in Taiwan. Fang is a trilingual director/actor/singer/dancer/teaching artist, now based in New York. She has done plenty of original musicals and plays in both Taiwan and the United States. She is currently one of the residential dancers at the New York Chinese Cultural Center and teaches theater dance and Gyrokinesis at the Taiwan Center and YWCA Queens. Selected credits include Mulan the Musical (Singapore tour), Starry Memory (National tour), War+Lovers (Theater Row), Bliss Street (Theatre for the New City), and Islanders (Culture Lab LIC). Instagram: @fang_nytw

David Quang Pham is a musical theater science communicator. He writes science musicals and consults on stories that explore STEM. As a Vietnamese American scientist, Eastern fables and modern science inform his stories. His musicals personifying astrophysics, quantum mechanics, and botany are respectively: Ellipses (2024 Syracuse NWNV semifinalist, 2023 Theatre About Science International Conference, 2023 Musical Theatre Factory at Signature Theatre, 2023 Milky Way Theatre Company at Theatre 71, 2022 Colorado New Musical Festival, 2022 O'Neill Theater Center semifinalist, 2021 Working Title Playwrights), Tour (2020 Downtown Urban Arts Festival finalist), and Turnover: A New Leaf (2025 Queer Theatre Kalamazoo, 2024 The Tank's Pridefest, 2024 Theatre on the Verge at Abington Art Center, 2023 Undiscovered Countries Infinite Festival). His musicals have been produced in Atlanta; Boulder, Colorado; Manhattan; Philadelphia; and Coimbra, Portugal. Janelle Lawrence mentors him, helping to forge his broad range of musical styles including pop, punk, tango, and Cai Luong. After completing an astrophysics and theatre education at Michigan State University, he studied playwriting as a Working Title Playwrights apprentice in Atlanta and Playwrights Foundation fellow in San Francisco. His moonbase is in Washington Heights. His earth is Wyoming, Michigan. Be up to lightspeed at sciencetheatre.us and @sciencetheatre.

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