Sneak peak of EARTH FIRST! the musical
“Inside These Walls” from IMPOSSIBLE GREEN
Lyrics and Vocals by: Claire-Frances Sullivan
Music and Piano by: me!
Hey! I’m Sequoia (she/her/hers), a radical composer, teacher, and collaborative theater artist based in New York City. I am passionate about creating work that is accessible, equitable, funny, and reimagines the possibilities of what the world could be by challenging traditional storytelling expectations through a feminist and anti-racist lens. My work in community-building echoes in her work as a theater artist because I believe collaboration is practice for living and allows us to create the world we want to live in (and sing in) together.
My music has been performed at Ars Nova, 54 Below, Green Room 42, The Lark, NY Theatre Barn, The York Theatre, Symphony Space, Wild Project, The Stone, Musical Theatre Factory, New Dramatists, Dartmouth, and College of the Atlantic.
I am currently in my final year at Tisch NYU (Graduate Musical Theatre Writing Program). Proud alum of Purchase Conservatory of Music (Classical Composition); BMI Lehman Engel Musical Theater Workshop; New Dramatists Composer-Librettist Studio. She is a member of the Dramatist Guild and Maestra.
Recent works include: Next Year In Connecticut! (NYU GMTWP), Earth First! (Macdowell Fellowship, College of the Atlantic), Silent Springs (BMI), and Impossible Green (The York Theatre).
NEXT YEAR IN CONNECTICUT! is an original musical that follows the Stableman family and their guests (both invited and not) over the course of one long Passover Seder. The show features mental illness musical chairs, a dog shiva, and hey this might even be the year that Elijah (the prophet) actually shows up! The music is character driven, witty, with unexpected melodies and rhythms, with influences ranging from Fiona Apple to Leonard Bernstein.
EARTH FIRST! (EF!), the radical environmental movement, has been at the forefront of direct action to save the planet since 1981. EF! made famous, dramatic, non-violent tactics such as tree-sits, road blockades, and activists chaining themselves to bulldozers. Over the past 40 years, the movement has grown, evolved, and splintered. Some members have “aged out”, while some served lengthy prison sentences for “eco-terrorism.” Many former members became leaders in larger fights for social and environmental justice. EF! (a new musical) brings this movement’s culture, history and present to the stage through an immersive, sung-through musical. Audience members find themselves acting as participants at the “Round River Rendezvous,”the movement’s annual gathering. As always, the gathering will end with a mass action such as a blockade or sit-in and everyone is asked to prepare themselves. The ensemble-based play includes new twists on classic musical tropes. A queer love triangle unfolds between two of the tree-climbing instructors and a prison abolitionist. Microorganisms that break down human excrement get a bombastic kick-line moment. A “primitive skills” practitioner tangos while teaching us all about how to brush your teeth with a stick. Earth First! the musical has been developed at the Macdowell Arts Colony.
SILENT SPRINGS, with book and lyrics by Laura Barati, is set in present-day, small-town USA. The show follows Nadia, Bella, and Mary, three students at Silent Springs High who discover that they are all sexual assault survivors whose rapes have been dismissed, ignored, or covered up by their community and local law enforcement. After the justice system fails them, they decide to take justice into their own hands. In the vein of Little Shop of Horrors meets Sweeney Todd (or Crazy Ex-Girlfriend hooks up with Kill Bill), Silent Springs is a darkly comedic, original, feminist revenge-fantasy musical. Silent Springs has been developed at the BMI Lehman-Engel Musical Theater Workshop.
IMPOSSIBLE GREEN, with book and lyrics by Claire-Frances Sullivan, is an environmentalist, anti-capitalist, science-fiction original story that takes place on a future earth where people are forced to live in factories producing their own atmosphere to survive. The bottom (working-class) floor is thrown into turmoil when the protagonist, Birdy, finds a leaf in a world where there are no longer trees…or are there? This leaf should not exist. A story of class, revolution, and sacrifice, Impossible Green asks us to dream bigger and taller than we ever have. Impossible Green had a workshop in January of 2021 with the York Theatre in New York City.