Off-Broadway’s Public Adds New Jocelyn Bioh, Skin of Our Teeth Musicals to 2025 Slate
Saheem Ali will direct Goddess, featuring a book by Jaja’s African Hair Braiding‘s Bioh and songs by Michael Thurber.
Jocelyn Bioh
Heather Gershonowitz
Off-Broadway’s Public Theater has added a pair of new musicals to its upcoming programming, both to perform in 2025.
First up will be Goddess, making its New York premiere at the company beginning April 25, 2025, and continuing through June 1 in the Newman Theater. Opening night will be May 20. Conceived and directed by Saheem Ali, the work features a book by Jocelyn Bioh (Jaja’s African Hair Braiding) and songs by Michael Thurber. Darrell Grand Moultrie will choreograph.
The original musical, inspired by the myth of Marimba, centers on a mysterious singer who arrives in a Kenyan Afro-jazz club and casts her spell on everyone, including a young man visiting home from studying in America who suddenly questions his life plans. The work received its world premiere in 2022 at Berkeley Rep. Read the reviews from that run here.
“When I was in my late teens growing up in Kenya, I dreamt of one day creating an original musical inspired by a myth about the goddess of music,” shares Ali in a statement. “Years later, after immigrating to the United States, I gained the courage to pursue this vision. It’s been quite a journey! At the core of the story—about the intersection of the creative and the divine—is a reminder that one can only step into one’s power by accepting one’s truth. I’m grateful to my creative siblings, Michael Thurber, Jocelyn Bioh, and Darrell Grand Moultrie, for sticking beside me through the years, as we now bring this beautiful story set in my home country to my artistic home, The Public Theater.”
Moving into fall 2025, the company will present the world premiere of The Seat of Our Pants, written by Ethan Lipton. Leigh Silverman will direct the new work, an adaptation of Thornton Wilder’s The Skin of Our Teeth. Dates are to be announced.
Lipton, an alum of the Public’s Emerging Writers Group, is not the first to attempt to musicalize the Pulitzer-winning 1942 play. An earlier musical version featuring songs by Chicago and Cabaret songwriting duo John Kander and Fred Ebb played Virginia’s Signature Theatre in 1999, and a heavily revised edition was announced for London’s West End, only for the Wilder estate to rescind the rights in the 11th hour. Kander and Ebb’s version hasn’t been seen since. A similar fate befell The Fantasticks writers Harvey Schmidt and Tom Jones’ Grovers Corners, a musical version of Wilder’s Our Town whose rights were pulled following a premiere production at Illinois’ Marriott Theatre.
“The Skin of Our Teeth is a beautiful play,” says Lipton in a statement. “A comedy about a family in a world of never-ending existential crises, Wilder’s script is prescient and heartbreaking and totally bonkers. I’m thrilled to have been given the chance to turn the show into a musical—at The Public, no less, and with the great Leigh Silverman—and I can’t wait to share it with our own totally screwed-up world.”
“The Skin of Our Teeth blew the roof off Broadway in 1942, hurling it through time and space,” adds Wilder family spokesperson Tappan Wilder. “After a long search for a music-maker for Skin, the stars aligned and led us to Ethan Lipton. ‘Sensibility’ is a difficult word to define, but not where the crazy and timeless genius of the play, Lipton, and Silverman’s talents are concerned.”
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