Musical Librettos

Every Man a King: A New Orleans Jazz Fable

Creative Team

Conceived, Co-written, and Performed by Alex-Christian Lucas

Book by Alex-Christian Lucas and Sophie Trist

Music and Lyrics by Kevin Gullage

Additional Music and Lyrics by Huey P. Long and Castro Carazo

Musical Arrangements and Underscoring by Olivia Gonzalez

Meet firebrand Governor Huey Pierce Long, the flamboyant depression-era populist politician with the personality of Donald Trump and the politics of Bernie Sanders. He ran Louisiana with the iron fist of a dictator, inspiring millions with his Share the Wealth program and capturing the hearts of the rural poor by giving them new roads, free toll bridges, and free textbooks to their school children, black and white alike, earning him the enmity of the KKK, the ruling political elite, and even President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who deemed him “the second most dangerous man in America.” The year is 1970, and three decades after his assassination, Long’s ghost reexamines his turbulent past to solve his murder, escape purgatory, and find redemption. Every Man a King: A New Orleans Jazz Fable is a riveting cautionary tale of ambition, arrogance, romance, and comedy that poses universal questions about the destructive nature of populism, pride, and the importance of family set against the backdrop of New Orleans’ unique culture.The original score by Kevin Gullage draws on New Orleans' world-famous musical palette of gospel, jazz, and blues and also interpolates five songs written by Huey P. Long himself during his own lifetime. The show has been through a series of three staged workshop performances, enabling significant refinements and revisions. The writing team are currently seeking producers, theatres, and presenting partners to give the show its first fully staged performance.

175ers: A New Musical Epic

Meet Johann Kapaun, a young student in Nazi Vienna who falls hopelessly in love with another man, Fred. When their relationship is discovered by Nazi officials, Johann gets sentenced to “protective custody” in a concentration camp under Paragraph 175 of the German Penal Code. These are the men with the pink triangle, homosexuals who were maligned, scapegoated, and sentenced to death in concentration camps for who they loved. Through torturous beatings, constant harassment from homophobic Nazi officers and prisoners alike, and inhumane living conditions, Johann manages to survive Flossenburg and World War II at the cost of immense personal sacrifice, sustained by the friendship of fellow inmates and his own determination to reunite with his family and Fred. The path Johann charts for himself after the war and his insistence on telling his story and that of his fellow 175ers energized the gay rights movement, spurring the reclamation of the pink triangle as a symbol of pride by offering the first account of a gay Holocaust survivor at a time when it was still illegal and dangerous to declare oneself openly gay. This musical charts the virtually unknown story of a whole demographic of men who were systematically eradicated by the Nazis simply for being gay, reminding us of why it is important to be open and proud of who you are and who you love.

Creative Team

Conceived by Alex-Christian Lucas

Book by Alex-Christian Lucas and Sophie Trist

Music by Andrew Gerald Thomas

Lyrics by Andrew Gerald Thomas and Alex-Christian Lucas

Inspired by the first published memoir of a gay Holocaust survivor as described in Heinz Heger’s The Men with the Pink Triangle