VIDEO: Spotlight On 5th Avenue's First Draft Series - YOKO'S HUSBAND'S KILLER'S JAPANESE WIFE, GLORIA

Did Yoko Ono really break up The Beatles? Was Gloria Abe actually responsible for her husband killing John Lennon? And if Asian women will inevitably be blamed for the actions of their white husbands, shouldn't they at least get a say in the matter?

Erika Ji, Clare Fuyuko Bierman, and Brandy Hoang Collier, the team behind Yoko's Husband's Killer's Japanese Wife, Gloria, break down their vivid new musical in this month's Spotlight On.

Erika Ji is a Chinese American cross-genre composer and storyteller. Her work has been featured Off-Broadway and around the world by Broadway's Future Songbook at Lincoln Center, the Rattlestick Playwrights Theater, the Nadia Boulanger Institute, and the Musical Theatre Factory at Joe's Pub at The Public Theater. Most recently, she and Clare Bierman were winners of the 2021 New Voices Project for their immersive circus experience VISARE. As a conductor, pianist, and vocalist, Erika has performed on national TV for CBS Sunday Morning, at the Wari??eld Theatre in San Francisco, and for house concerts across the country. A Tisch Fellow at the NYU Tisch Graduate Musical Theatre Writing Program, Erika grew up in California, studied computer science and philosophy at Stanford University, organized the Viennese Ball in San Francisco, and built products at Dropbox before deciding to follow the music.

Brandy Hoang Collier is a queer, Vietnamese-American playwright, poet and composer from San Antonio, TX. She earned her BA in Music and English from Texas A&M and her MFA in Musical Theatre Writing from NYU Tisch. Selected librettos include "Cambio de Temporada," a bi-lingual musical with composer Pablo Concha, and "Red Flag," a ten-minute musical with composer Stephen Wagener Bennett (adapted for and performed on The Latest Draft Podcast). She also composed the music for "La Voisin: A Feminist AF Musical" with librettist Gabriella Balsam and co-composer Deniz Demirkurt. Her new sci-i?? musical "The Blazing World" (book and lyrics by Collier, music by Sean Eads) is presenting a virtual adaptation in the 2021 Polyphone Festival of New and Emerging Musicals. Collier is also Co-Founder and Artistic Director (as well as designer, builder, and general problem solver) of Root Beer Occasion Theatre Company in Brooklyn. Among other projects, Collier orchestrated Root Beer Occasion's inaugural event, "The Living Room Stories Play Festival," and their bad play contest "The Garbage Revue" (including the staged reading of the i??nalists).

Clare Fuyuko Bierman is a playwright and lyricist raised in a Japanese-Jewish home with some rabbits, a snake, and a bunch of finches. She has worked for many environmental artists in San Francisco, including the FutureFarmers, Studio for Urban Projects, and the Climate Music Project. Written works include VISARE (composer Erika Ji, winner of the New Musicals Inc. New Voices Project), Greenwich, 1957 (composer Joshua Vranas, Rattlestick Playwrights Theater), Emma and the West (composer Joshua Vranas, Virginia Voices New Musical Theater Showcase), Death and Taxes (composer Brooke Trumm, HARP Theatricals), and The Very Furious Kugel (Spooky Action Theater). As an improviser, she has performed across the US and Europe. Originally from Los Angeles, she has received her MFA in Musical Theater Writing from New York University.

Our flagship new musical development program, First Draft: Raise Your Voice was created with three goals in mind: foster new musicals by writers from populations that have been left out of the musical theater canon; encourage and support brand new stories from authentic perspectives; and introduce new, creative voices to theater professionals and producers to amplify their work so that it is seen, heard, and developed by the greater musical theater community.

First Draft is a commissioning program designed to support new musical theater writers through the completion of a first draft of a brand-new musical. Across an 18-month cycle, writers will receive financial, artistic, dramaturgical, travel, and production support as they complete this first draft and will have the opportunity to hear their words spoken and songs sung at preliminary readings. We encourage everyone interested to apply-previous experience writing musical theater is not required. This program is committed to supporting writers on both a local and national scale.

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