Anna K Jacobs takes a cult movie to the stage with Strange Loop’s Michael R Jackson. Campy, horror musical about Vagina dentata had such a successful run at Playwrights Horizons that it is moving to an open ended run at New World Stages. Anna gives us the scoop on all things teeth, partnering with Michael R Jackson and what projects are coming up next.
Eila & Bruce also chat about Teeth’s upcoming album release. Their visit to Empire the Musical and Denzel Washington’s Oscar for Training Day.
Anna K. Jacobs is a Jonathan Larson and Billie Burke Ziegfeld Award-winning composer, lyricist, and book writer. She likes to disarm her audiences by telling stories that ask questions without serving up the answers, and by marrying them with music and language that’s as surprising and delightful as, well, life.
Anna’s projects are diverse, in part due to the many different collaborations she has enjoyed over the years. Her stage musicals include POP! (Yale Rep, Pittsburgh City Theatre, Studio Theatre; book/lyrics by Maggie-Kate Coleman), Teeth (NAMT, O’Neill; co-book/lyrics by Pulitzer Prize and Tony-winner Michael R. Jackson), Anytown (George Street Playhouse; book by Jim Jack), Harmony, Kansas (Diversionary Theatre; book/lyrics by Bill Nelson), Echo (Musical Theatre Factory), and Stella and the Moon Man (Sydney Theatre Company/Theatre of Image; play by Richard Tulloch, co-composed by Adrian Kelly). She contributed music and lyrics to the multi-composer works, Witnesses (California Center for the Arts, Escondido; book by Robert Freedman) and Letters to the President (Cooper Union). She also penned the screenplay for The Real Gemma Jordan (University of Nebraska-Lincoln; music/lyrics by Rob Rokicki, directed by Alexander Jeffery & Alisa Belflower), which she is now adapting into a stage musical, and music and lyrics for the movie musical Kaya: Taste of Paradise (NY Film Academy; screenplay by Jerome A. Parker, directed by Paul Warner).
Currently, Anna and her playwright-collaborator, Anna Ziegler, are working on A House Without Windows, a new musical about the life and disappearance of child prodigy author, Barbara Newhall Follett, and commissioned by Barbara Whitman Productions and Grove Entertainment. She is also writing the book for a new musical adaptation for Disney Cruise Line Entertainment.
In addition to the Larson and Ziegfeld awards, Anna is a recipient of the Eric Salzman Award for New Music Theater Composition. She has had the honor of being a former Sundance Fellow and Dramatists Guild Fellow, and has been an Artist in Residence at Rhinebeck Writers Retreat, Goodspeed Musicals, Ars Nova, New Dramatists, Musical Theatre Factory, and Barrington Stage Company. A classically trained composer, her choral works have been commissioned and performed throughout the world by choirs including the New York City Gay Men’s Chorus, the National Lutheran Choir, the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Choir, the Nightingale-Bamford School, the Hotchkiss School, the Sydneian Bach Choir, and Coro Innominata.
As an educator, Anna is passionate about helping the next generation of songwriters to develop their voices and craft. She is the founding Artistic Director of the New York Youth Symphony’s Musical Theater Songwriting Program, and has served on the faculties of the Institute for American Musical Theatre, Temple University, Mannes School of Music, and the Dramatists Guild Institute. From 2013-18, she facilitated the NYMF Songwriting Workshop.
Originally from Sydney, Australia, Anna has called Brooklyn home since 2006.
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