Gloryana

Synopsis

Gloryana is an eclectic original musical that tells the stories of two black teenagers in small-town Mississippi who are charged with murder, and five people around them whose lives are turned upside-down as a result. Pierce, the black Ivy League lawyer who has returned to the South to help poor communities, volunteers to represent the boys and discovers he’s in way over his head. Jewel, the sometime girlfriend of the murdered man, is suddenly given opportunities to leave her crummy job at the diner and live out her dreams of being Scarlett O’Hara. Carinne, mother of one of the boys and a local cabaret singer, involuntarily becomes a civil rights activist and cultural touchstone after a song she wrote is played on the radio. Virginia, president of the local chapter of the Daughters of Dixie, sees in Jewel a new friend and a way to infuse some younger blood into her organization, while Mason, a disturbed young Civil War fanatic, sees Jewel on TV and vows to protect her from what he sees as the threats of modern society.

As these stories unfold, we hear the intimate letters between Nathaniel Burnett and Claire Durham, a Confederate soldier and a Union nurse, as they get to know each other during the final months of the War that has torn their families and their country apart.

Are we defined by our heritage? Where we’re born? Or can we transcend our history, as individuals and as a nation, and re-invent ourselves? With a score that ranges from traditional musical theatre to hip-hop, spirituals and gospel to folk and country rock, Gloryana takes a candid look at how race and cultural differences can tear us apart – or bring us together.