#RESIST
PART OF THE NEW MUSICALS LAB WRITER’S RETREAT
By Annalisa Dias and Ronee Penoi
“Do you realize we're still here? The ones you thought had gone away? We learned resistance from our ancestors. We live it everyday.”
“America Was Never Great” | from #RESIST
ABOUT #RESIST
#RESIST: THE MUSICAL is a comedic satire that unravels the ways the inherent narcissism of the #resistance (as seen online) may actually be a manifestation of the same kind of individualist showmanship that gave rise to the era of Trump.
In #RESIST, residents of the Big City are excited to vote for their first female president. When things don't go as they expected, Big City residents turn to social media to unleash their rage and to hashtag-resist. Except, this doesn't go quite as they planned either.
In the age of the #resistance, our new musical aims to skewer white feminist ideology, performative wokeness, and the liberal fantasy of a post-racial America. Songs include, "How Did This Happen?" “Let’s Hashtag Resist,” "A March Will Solve Our Problems," and "Take a Back Seat, Becky."
ABOUt FLORA MUSICALS
Annalisa Dias' & Ronee Penoi's musical theatre partnership, Flora Musicals, is the result of six years of personal collaboration. Together the team seeks to challenge the dominant narrative. With their artistic work, and in the way they build that artistic work, they mean to center the voices and experiences of indigenous people and people of color. Flora Musicals believes that musical theater can advance the impact of marginalized narratives in a rare and special way.
“America was never great”
Watch Cindy Tsai perform a work-in-progress song from a workshop version of the show.
THE CREATORS
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Annalisa Dias
Creator
Annalisa Dias is a Goan-American citizen artist, community organizer, and award-winning theatre maker working at the intersection of racial justice and care for the earth. She is Director of Artistic Partnerships & Innovation at Baltimore Center Stage. Annalisa is also a Co-Founder of Groundwater Arts. Prior to joining BCS, Annalisa was a Producing Playwright and Acting Creative Producer with The Welders, a DC playwright's collective; and a Co-Founder of the DC Coalition for Theatre & Social Justice. -
Ronee Penoi
Creator
Ronee Penoi is the founder of Theatre from the District, an effort to support, advance, and tour the work of talented generative artists in Washington, DC. She was most recently the National New Play Network Producer-in-Residence at Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company, where her focus was on presenting ensemble/devised/generative work inside new play theaters. At Woolly, she was dramaturg for the remounted production of Mike Daisey’s The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs and Basil Twist’s Arias with a Twist. She is the author of A Producing Theatre’s Guide to Presenting, a handbook of tools and resources for small-to-mid-sized theaters nationwide. Previously, she was part of the inaugural class of New Play Producing Fellows at the American Voices New Play Institute at Arena Stage, where she produced Karen Zacarias’ playwright residency as well as a national convening on devised work. Ronee was Assistant Stage Manager for Anna Deavere Smith’s national tour of Let Me Down Easy, was Directing Fellow for Arena Stage’s 08-09 season, and Artistic Fellow for The Shakespeare Theatre’s 07-08 season. Currently, Ronee is writing a musical about Carlisle Indian School (recipient of a Creative Communities Fund grant from Cultural DC’s Mead Theater Lab). She is a proud graduate of Princeton University.