...On
Off-Broadway! It's official, the musical based on the life
story of The Shaggs, "The Shaggs: Philosophy of the World",
created by Joy Gregory, John Langs and Yours Truly, is headed for a major
production that is at the pinnacle of Off-Broadway on fabled 42nd
street - at Playwrights'
Horizons, the people who brought
you "Grey
Gardens", "Floyd
Collins", and Stephen Sondheim's "Assassins", and" Sunday
in the Park with George". Co-producing with them for the first time
is the esteemed New
York Theatre Workshop,
whose productions include "Rent" and "Bright Lights, Big
City".
Hoo-boy, I can't wait to invite my mama to this show! But first, I have
to finish writing it. Yes, I know, we've been working on it for 9 years,
you'd think it would be finished by now, but I'm born to tinker, and
there's just a few things that need fixing here and there. It's great,
it's good to go, but if I gotta rent a tux to go to the opening night,
I want to make sure everything in the show is polished to perfection. As
I last wrote to you about this, we were just about to do a reading at
Playwrights'
Horizons in December. That reading went very well, and showed
us places that needed work. We worked those places, and had another fine
reading in April, where we found a few more things to work on, and also
got a fire lit under a bunch of producers. After a couple months of shaking
things out, New York Theatre
Workshop came on board to co-produce, and
now we're on track to a full production this coming spring.
You can read all about it in the New
York Times, or the New
York Post, or Playbill,
or...
The rumors are all true.



