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A Musical By NEIL KLEIN

ABOUT:

According to United Language Group, The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis posits that “language either determines or influences one’s thought.” Ted Chiang’s short story Story of Your Life, and the inspiration for the major motion picture Arrival, takes this hypothesis to the next level. What if when humans acquired consciousness, our language determined our reality? That is to say, it became sequential. We read a sentence from beginning to end. And what if there was an extraterrestrial species that acquired consciousness, and read their sentences all at once. Thus, creating a simultaneous mode of awareness.  

A Minimizing, Maximizing Purpose is a concept musical based on this theory. Broken up into sixteen parts, we follow Louise, a decorated linguist asked to translate the Heptapod language, her family, a harrowing tragedy, and the way her mind adapts to understand a simultaneous reality.

Music plays a huge part in the Heptapod language.  As a music theorist, I pondered how I could reflect this theory of language into music - often a language in itself. The Heptapods speak in live music, a cacophony of sound that is harmonically far away from the musical language of our human characters. I took directly from an iconic part of Chiang’s short story where Louise recognizes the way Heptapods add speech on top of itself to form sentences and found a theoretically exciting way to translate that, and one that holds clarity in intention as an important part of creating it.

A Play By NEIL KLEIN

Nate came out as a trans man years ago. Confidently. He’s made friends, had lovers, created community as a proud trans man. Then, he joins a book club, not realizing it is a “space for only women and femmes.” In this club, he starts to question whether his proud identity is his true one, whether it is proud at all, and if he cares to come clean and lose the one bit of structure in his life that the book club has given him. 

Nate’s best friend Finn – also a trans man – begs Nate to be honest with himself. He thinks Nate is scared of what it means to be a man. It’s clear Nate believes men are scary, evil, and that all they do is hurt people. Which begs the question, is that how Nate sees Finn? 

As Finn and Nate fight, they both fall into romances. Finn, with charismatic cis gay guy Grey, who speaks his mind and sees through Finn’s proud exterior to his uncomfortable interior, the one that only dates cis men because it makes him feel like a “real man.” And Nate, with Rachel, a member of the book club, and a cis lesbian. 

With contradicting identities flying around, self-doubt eating everyone alive, and enough book references to please any English Lit professor... The FTM Book Club asks: what is queer masculinity? How do we stay sure of ourselves? And: How real is community, if we don’t understand our own? 

A Musical

“C’est Mon Plaisir” is engraved below a phoenix, an emblem of immortality, on a crest that hangs in the entranceway to the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum.

C’est Mon Plaisir. It’s My Pleasure. 

The pleasure refers to the priceless art that Isabella Stewart Garnder dedicated her life to collecting. From the late 19th century through to the early 20th century, Isabella curated one of the most eclectic and meaningful galleries the world has ever seen. And in 1990, 13 works estimated to be worth over 500 million dollars were stolen from her museum, the home she made in Boston. 

Is this how Isabella is remembered? Not as a dedicated artist and scandalizing socialite, but by the empty frames that hang to this day in the Dutch Room of her museum?

Her life, her fears, and her triumphs shine bright, like she did. ISABELLA OF BOSTON reminds us that legacy can be created, yet it can just as easily be taken away. Like paintings cut out of their frames, casting shadows over a life well lived, memory is left up to the beholder.

A Musical By NEIL KLEIN

Elizabeth is poor. She's in debt. She visits financial advisors, who offer no help or hope. With nowhere else to turn, Elizabeth starts considering the most unfounded ideas. In this hilarious new musical, the worst solutions are the best solutions, and the best solution is faking your death. With the help of her best friend Tyler, a pseudocide fanatic Will, and a “Liar For Hire” Frank, Elizabeth finds her purpose through the act of starting over, and quickly learns faking your death is the classiest escape around.

Playing Dead was produced by SuperHuman Arts and had a performance at Berklee College of Music April 22nd, 2023