STORMING HEAVEN: THE MUSICAL Pre-Broadway Work Shop at the WEST VIRGINIA PUBLIC THEATRE on January 19th!

Storming Heaven, the acclaimed novel by West Virginia based writer Denise Giardina released in 1987, is being made into a musical and will have a pre-Broadway staged reading in Morgantown, WV thanks to a collaboration with the West Virginia Public Theatre (WVPT).

WVPT has teamed up with New York City composers, Denise Giardina and country music artist Tracy Lawrence to develop Storming Heaven: The Musical and will reveal the culmination of their work at the stage reading of the new musical on Saturday, January 19th, 2019 at 7:30 PM at the Gladys G. Davis Theatre (WVU Creative Arts Center) in Morgantown, WV. This event is free to the public. Visit the Facebook event page by clicking here.

The Gladys G. Davis Theatre is located at 1 Fine Arts Drive, Morgantown, WV 26506.

From their press release: "Based on Giardina's W.D. Weatherford Award winning novel, Storming Heaven is a fictionalized account of the labor strike in southern West Virginia coal mines and the Battle of Blair Mountain. The musical is set in a 1920s West Virginia town where the coal company steals everything, including the souls of its miners. Within this tumultuous and precarious world, we meet five people whose lives are irrevocably changed by the events surrounding them."

Those characters include Carrie Bishop, a mine doctor's nurse and sister of the mine superintendent, who happens to be entangled in a love triangle with Albion Freeman - her husband and preacher to the miners - and Rondal Lloyd, a Union organizer. The story follows Carrie as she struggles with finding her own identity - a fight which parallels the miner's struggle for basic human rights.

Giardina's novel has been adapted into a musical by Katy Blake and Peter Davenport, with additional help from Flip Anderson and country musical superstar Tracey Lawrence. The workshop is being directed by WVPT Artistic Director Jerry McGonigle with music directed by Emily Otto. The workshop will feature performances by a mixture of local and guest artists from NYC and Pittsburgh.

You can find out more information by visiting West Virginia Public Theatre Facebook, Twitter or Instagram (@wvpublictheatre / #WVPT2019) or by visiting their website.

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