WFHB Bloomington Community Radio
BPP is proud to announce this season’s BPP/IU Collaborative Musical Calling All Kates. Written by Emily Goodson and Jeremy Schonfeld, Calling All Kates is the writing duo’s third musical developed at BPP. The story is based off of a real life story that took place in 2014 when a Toronto man made headlines by offering a free round-the-world trip to a woman with the same name as his ex-girlfriend.
In Calling All Kates, Marc gets dumped by his fiancé, Kate McBride, right before their wedding and honeymoon around the world. He’s now single and left to travel the globe alone since his plane tickets are non-transferrable and non-refundable. In an act of desperation, Marc posts an ad online for the only companion who could legally join him… someone with the exact same name as his ex-fiancé. Set loose in a bunch of different foreign countries, strangers Marc and Kate must get to know one another and learn to get along in the wake of Marc’s heartbreak. Will they fall in love? Probably not. Will they have a heck of a good time? Definitely.
“When I first heard the story, I immediately thought – THIS HAS TO BE A PLAY! Quite honestly, I’m surprised Hollywood hasn’t beaten us to the punch. And commissioning Emily & Jeremy to write this, the team that has brought BPP two of our most successful musicals, Spun and Greta, seemed like the perfect fit. What we have now is a show that is 100% BPP: it’s heartfelt, meaningful, fun, funny, and completely and totally original – you definitely can’t see this show anywhere else in the world,” says Director Chad Rabinovitz.
Book writer Emily Goodson was immediately on board with the idea as well. “We loved the inherent adventure in this story. Two strangers thrown together – literally – in a foreign land. There’s just so possibility,” she says.
Calling All Kates stars Mike Nappi (The Life and Slimes of Marc Summers) and Emily Crowley. Benjamin Aaron Smith (Toast, Make Me Bad) is the Musical Director. The show features Scenic Design by David Wade (Row After Row, Thirty Day Mourning Period), Lighting Design by Jeffrey Small (The Life and Slimes of Marc Summers, Make Me Bad, Island Song), Costume Design by Chib Gratz (The Bull, the Moon and the Coronet of Stars, The Capables), Sound Design by David Sheehan (Home, Thirty Day Mourning Period), and Choreography by Berklea Going.
Emily Goodson (Playwright) lives in Bloomington, Indiana with her husband Gabe and their two children Bea and Rock. She has written for both The Blizzard Rewind and Blizzard Sells Out. Her comedy Lady Bits opened to sold-out crowds at the Indy Fringe Festival in August 2012. Other musicals include Spun and Greta with composer Jeremy Schonfeld. Spun was originally commissioned and produced by the Bloomington Playwrights Project in May 2013 with subsequent equity productions by the Phoenix Theater in Indianapolis in April 2014 and the Adirondack Theatre Festival in July 2015. It is slated for an Off-Broadway production in 2018. Her most recent play The Third Glass was selected for the 2015 Northern Writers Conference.
Jeremy Schonfeld (Composer/Lyricist) is a celebrated singer/songwriter, composer/lyricist, occasional actor, producer, mentor and teacher. His concept album Iron & Coal, produced in Vienna Austria with producing partners Beat4Feet (Martin Gellner and Werner Stranka), was nominated for several Amadeus Awards (Austrian Grammys), and is currently in development as a large-scale, hybrid multimedia theatrical production. Previously, Jeremy created the album 37 Notebooks, featuring vocal performance contributions from friends including Adam Pascal, Julia Murney, Tracie Thoms, Amy Spanger, Lauren Kennedy, and Donnie Kehr. “House of Love,” recorded by Shoshana Bean for 37 Notebooks (featuring the Broadway Dreams Chorus), has been recorded and performed numerous times, and is consistently used in many diverse charitable campaigns including Defying Inequality and Rockers on Broadway. The New York City Gay Men’s Chorus annual holiday concert at Town Hall was even appropriately billed as the “NYC Gay Men’s Chorus Holiday House of Love, featuring Lillias White”. Additional albums include Drift and Blue Skies and All, plus song contributions to the movie soundtrack for Clear Blue Tuesday (co-starring Jeremy) and the featured single Babazille Mahlangu written for the Broadway in South Africa campaign. Currently, Jeremy has been working in Nashville with producer Caleb Sherman, writing and producing material for up-and-coming singer Brook Wood and executive producing an EP for young singer/songwriter Lauren Weintraub (www.laurenweintraub.com).
As a composer/Lyricist, Jeremy has several shows under his belt, many in development. Drift, based on the concept album, has won numerous awards for productions at NYMF (New York Musical Theater Festival) and at the Kennedy Theater in Raleigh, N.C., featuring a diverse roster of talent, including Adam Pascal, Christian Campbell, Terrence Mann, Adam Kantor, and Jarrod Emick. Spun and Greta are part of an exciting, ongoing collaboration with partners Chad Rabinovitz (producing executive director) and Emily Goodson (Book) formed through the BPP (Bloomington Playwrights Project) at Indiana University. The team is currently developing a new, as-of-yet untitled show for production at the BPP in spring of 2017. Additionally, Jeremy is excited to have recently broken ground on an upcoming project with respected journalist and author, Steve Fishman of New York Magazine.
Some of Jeremy’s favorite performances include the opening ceremonies for the Maccabi Games in both Vienna and at Madison Square Garden, Hollywood in Vienna featuring Maestro David Newman and the Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra and co-star Deborah Cox, Drift at BB King’s, Several Rockers on Broadway concert events, and regular gigs in NYC rooms including Joe’s Pub, the Cutting Room, LPR, 54 Below, and the Bitter End.
Jeremy lives in Brooklyn with beautiful Kiwi-actress/therapeutic horse riding instructor wife Sarah-Jane Casey, toddler cutie Gustav, and his brilliant college-attending daughter Alexandra.
