Amandine, ten years in the making, is a collaboration between three of New York City's most distinctive theater artists: Winter Miller, 13P founding member who penned In Darfur (The Public Theater), among other acclaimed plays; Lance Horne, Emmy Award-winning composer and pianist known for his own work and collaborations with Alan Cumming, Amanda Palmer, Meow Meow, Sandra Bernhard and Justin VivIan Bond; and Drama Desk Award- winning director Josh Hecht (Christine Jorgensen Reveals), who specializes in new plays. Amandine is a singular love story, inspired by the incredible memoirs of Herculine Barbin, a 19th century intersex person who was raised a girl and died a man. The ensemble cast includes Broadway veterans Lea DeLaria, Nathan Lee Graham and Alexandra Silber, in a world premiere at the Cherry Lane Theatre (38 Commerce Street) main stage January 8-26, 2013.
Amandine-with a book and lyrics by Miller, with music and lyrics by Horne-tells the story of a person caught profoundly "in between." Born intersex and raised as a girl in the most traditional and cloistered of settings, Amandine is too smart, too ambitious, too awkward-and too unlike the other girls. Driven by shame and fear of her unruly body, she retreats into a life of the mind, teaching in a highly religious girls' academy. Amandine falls in love, but soon her body betrays her, leading to a shocking discovery with devastating consequences. Her final years are spent wandering Paris in a new role: that of a man. Yet, Amandine's struggle is ours: to be accepted for who we are, as we are.
From the extraordinary facts of Herculine's life, recorded through her memoirs, comes a highly theatrical musical of sweeping scope and universal appeal. The cast of five-including Broadway veterans
Lea DeLaria,
Alexandra Silber and
Nathan Lee Graham-each play multiple characters of both genders.
Motivated by the tragically high bullying and suicide statistics among LGBT youth, the show's creators have initiated a Youth Outreach Program with free tickets, talks and symposia.
In our time, when parents stress if Billy wants to wear a dress to school, when teenagers buy hormones illegally, when one out of three LGBT youth commit suicide, and politicians on the left and right rage over control of the body, the musical Amandine asks: What if we let our children simply grow into whoever they are?
Winter Miller (Book) Miller's award-winning drama In Darfur premiered at
The Public Theater, followed by a standing-room-only performance at their 1800-seat Delacorte Theater, a first for a play by a woman. Miller traveled to the Sudan border to research on the ground. In Darfur has been produced at theaters across the country. She is the author of The Penetration Play, The Arrival, Paternity, Home/Away, and Conspicuous. She is a founding member of the Obie- winning playwriting collective 13P, a Core Writer with The Playwrights Center, and has been awarded fellowships from
The Sundance Institute, The Cherry Lane Mentor Project, Hedgebrook and Voice&Vision. Commissions ?include: Joe's Pub, The Guthrie, Baltimore Center Stage, The Playwright's Center,
Keen Company, Theatre Askew and Voices of Uganda.
Miller has led writing workshops with
Primary Stages, Sundance,
Stella Adler, Theatre Askew, Arts Connection Hi- 5 (with TRaC, a two-time finalist for the President's Coming Up Taller Award, Beacon High School and with youth in Northern Uganda and Palestine). She writes politically engaging plays with and for marginalized youth to perform. Voices of Uganda brought her to northern Uganda to write short plays for a group of youth living in a refugee camp whose lives had been devastated by the Lord's Resistance Army and AIDS.
Ruby Dee,
Allison Janney and Liv Ullman have performed Lifelines, Miller's monologue about a Ugandan grandmother. Her monologue Mother to Son is published in
Eve Ensler's anthology A Memory, A Monologue, A Rant and A Prayer and in the anthology Best Women's Monologues of The Millennium. Mother... toured cities with the photo exhibit Darfur/Darfur and the documentary The Devil Came on Horseback. Miller is in the upcoming documentary After Kony: Staging Hope. Her plays also have been performed in London and Uganda and are published by Playscripts, Inc. The Penetration Play is excerpted in Best Stage Scenes 2005 and Best Monologues 2005.
Lance Horne (Composer) Horne received an Emmy for Best Original Song (Daytime: One Life to Live), the
Jonathan Larson Award for composer-lyricist, a Bistro Award for producing
Alan Cumming's album, I Bought a Blue Car Today, ASCAP Young Composer Awards, the
ASCAP FoundationJamie deRoy Award for Emerging Songwriter, Interlochen Ovation Award, and is a Usual Suspect at NYTW. Composition residencies at the Orchard Project, New Harmony Project, American Opera Projects, TheaterWorks Palo Alto, ACT, Franklin Furnace, ArsNova, Public Theater, and the O'Neill National Music Theater Conference. As an arranger / music director: at
American Repertory Theater, Prometheus Bound by
Steven Sater and
Serj Tankian (System of a Down) and Cabaret starring Amanda Palmer; at
The National Theatre in London, alice by Heart by
Duncan Sheik and
Steven Sater.
He contributed original material and arrangements to Vegas! The Show currently playing at Planet Hollywood Casino in Las Vegas and provided the vocal arrangements for the Broadway production of Little Women. His debut album First Things Last released on Yellow Sound Label (ADA/Warner) with concurrent concerts at Lincoln Center and on the West End. Scores and songs for film: Ready? OK! starring
Carrie Preston (True Blood) and
Michael Emerson (Lost), To Paint the Portrait of a Bird, Thank You For Judging, and Yes, Virginia.
Recordings: Little Women; Yes, Virginia; Songs From An Unmade Bed (Ghostlight); A Season's Promise (New World Records), The Battery's Down Season 2 (Sh-K-Boom),
Julie Atherton's No Space for Air (Speckulation), One Life to Live: Prom Night- the Musical (ABC), and
Alan Cumming: I Bought a Blue Car Today (Yellow Sound Label) with additional singles with Cumming and remixes by DJ Morel. He has performed alongside, composed, and/or provided arrangements for
Alan Cumming,
Kristin Chenoweth,
Ricki Lake,
Cheyenne Jackson, Kelli O'Hara,
Jake Shears,
Meow Meow, Justin Viv
Ian Bond,
Sandra Bernhard, Amanda Palmer/Dresden Dolls, and Boston Pops.
Josh Hecht (Director) Hecht is a Drama Desk Award-winning director of new plays. His work in New York includes
Drew Larimore's Out of Iceland (
Culture Project); Wearing Lorca's Bowtie (Duke on 42nd Street); Bradford Louryk's Christine Jorgensen Reveals (New World Stages – Drama Desk Award);
Anna Ziegler's BFF (DR2);
Bob Morris's Assisted Loving (MCC); Megan Mostyn-Brown's Girl (Cherry Lane);
Winter Miller's The Penetration Play (13P); Joseph Keckler's Jobz (PS 122), and productions at Partial Comfort, NYMF, the Ontological,
Ars Nova and others.
Selected regional credits include
Allison Moore's Slasher (Humana Festival); Megan Mostyn-Brown's Girl (Guthrie); Rachel Schroeder's Heliantha (Berkshire Theatre Festival); Ping Chong's Inside/Out (Kennedy Center, Flynn Center, Round House, Amaryllis – Writer/Performer), Christine Jorgensen (Boston Center for the Arts – Irne Nomination), Jake Jeppson's The Clearing and Howard Meyer's Welcome, This Is A Neighborhood Watch Community (both at Axial Theater Co) and
Annie Baker's Circle, Mirror, Transformation (Half Moon).
He annually leads two-dozen readings and workshops of new plays at theaters across the country, including. NYTW Usual Suspect,
Soho Rep Writer/Director Lab and LCT Lab. He is on the faculty of ESPA/
Primary Stages and NTI/O'Neill; and has taught in the New School for Drama's MFA program and the SUNY Purchase BFA program. He is Former Director of Playwright Development at
MCC Theater. Upcoming work includes Ping Chong's Inside/Out (LaMaMa), Brian Sutow's The Personals (No Rules / Signature Theater, D.C.), and The Gay Agenda at Joe's Pub.
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