Act One of A Guide to Modern Possession is playing this July at the District Fringe Festival!

​Click here for tickets

Art by Amanda Leigh Ponce

DEMO TRACKS

special thanks to christian montgomery, john sygar, and derrick truby jr, for lending their talents to these tracks

SUMMARY

Cody is barely scraping by: stuck in the endless cycle of minimum wage poverty, self-medicating with weed and beer, and avoiding telling their extremely religious, cancer-ridden mother that they are an atheist. Then there is the therapist they can’t remember ever meeting who is an enigmatic combination of various 20th century rockstars, the nagging feeling that their best friend Anna is hiding something from them, and the horrifying demonic activity happening all around Cody that no one else seems to notice. A Guide to Modern Possession is a two-act musical that boldly confronts style and genre to investigate the all too experienced realities of living with PTSD, while also paying homage to musical theater magic.

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​TIMELINE

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2020
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in november 2020 i write the first draft of the first song for my new musical and call it 'i-66'

i begin exploring the idea of demonic imagery as a vehicle for describing PTSD in my song "i-66"



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2021
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in may 2021 i attend a virtual goal-setting workshop for theater artists; i complete and self-produce a new song for the end of act 1

​in summer of 2021 i connect with dramaturg laley lippard for the first workshop of the piece. using demonic imagery and horror as a lens for depicting mental illness takes the forefront of the project and a new outline is created
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'dissociation song' is now available to stream on all music platforms. it is a song of defiance, one told from the middle of the story, where the protagonist, cody, not only succumbs to but embraces the hold their illness has on them

the act 2 finale 'midnight monsters' is released on all music platforms in december 2021. it is a song of healing, but one that tells the truth about the nature of trauma, showing cody at one of the most hopeful points in their journey

2022

a guide to modern possession is selected as one of the semi-finalists for the 2023 eugene o'neill musical theatre conference
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2023
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act one is completed, revised, not completed, revised again, not looked at for two months, revised again, and now looking for a home at which to do a reading

2025

a guide to modern possession is selected as a finalist for the vanguard arts project at olney theater center

a staged reading of act one of a guide to modern possession plays five performances at the inaugural district fringe festival in washington, dc