HISTORY & TRACK RECORD
A preliminary 84 page version of the playbook was granted a copyright license by the U.S. Copyright Office and The Library of Congress in 2019. It was also submitted to the Dramatists Guild and was a part of my official acceptance submission of materials in 2020.
It was revised 27 times since its inception and all materials, including music, were renewed for copyright in 2023. The final version included: 7 full songs, revised and constant skid row drumming interludes, several short songs, an addition of a sixth main character, additional poetry, dialogue and sheet music, totaling 134 pages.
2023
World Premier Directed by Karesa McElheny debuted at The Hudson Backstage Theatre on
June 3rd and runs through June 24th, 2023. Run Time: Approximately 2 Hours.
CAST FOR THE HUDSON BACKSTAGE THEATRE as follows:
“Abbott” - Alikhan Lochin, “Costella” – Lorinda Hawkins Smith**,
“Mother” – Betzi Marroquin, “Vanessa” – Veve Melendrez**,
“Carmen” & “Disembodied Voice” – emelle**,
“Police Officer,” “Darryl”& “Disembodied Voice #2” – Iron Donato,
“James” Thaddeus Nagey**
** Member of Actor’s Equity Association
Rehearsals for the world premiere of “Because It’s Sunny in L.A. (Especially on Skid Row)” started on May 6th and ended on June 2nd. June 3rd was opening night for the show with an attendance of approximately 55 patrons, plus 6 members of the press.
Saturday, April 8th at 4pm, as part of the 29 HOUR EQUITY CODE, a staged reading of “Because It’s Sunny in L.A. (Especially on Skid Row)” (With Talkback) at The Hudson Main Stage Theatre on 6539 Santa Monica Blvd, Hollywood, CA 90038.
Thursday April 6th from 8-10pm, as part of the 29 HOUR EQUITY CODE, a staged reading of “Because It’s Sunny in L.A. (Especially on Skid Row)” (With Talkback) was held at The Victory Theatre on 3326 West Victory Blvd, Burbank, CA 91505.
Obtained approval from Actors’ Equity Association to do a two week, 29 hour equity staged reading code from March 27th to April 8th, 2023. Rehearsed at the Actors’ Group in Burbank, following two professional stage readings at The Victory Theatre in Burbank and The Hudson Main Stage in Hollywood.
2020-2022
Workshopped over 380 hours of the playbook during the pandemic with dozens of students, professional and non-professional actors over Zoom, through self tapes, phone calls and written Feedback. Accomplished 18 rewrites based on workshopping and feedback.
The entire full-length play (84 pages) was scheduled to have live professional staged readings in cities nationwide in 2020 until the pandemic hit. Received a lot of interest and several offers to stage the full play in multiple cities, including Seattle, Minneapolis, Chicago, Hollywood and New York.
Act II, Scene III, a 7-minute scene was broadcast on April 30th at 5pm (Pacific) 7pm (Central) through ZOOM in conjunction with the Los Angeles Poverty Department theatre company and zAmya Theatre Project (Minnesota).
ACT II, SCENE II of Because It’s Sunny in LA was submitted to the Northridge Review (literary journal), written partially in pentameter, was published in their SPRING 2020 issue. There was an additional staged reading of this scene at Cal. State Northridge on ZOOM, APRIL 24th of 2020.
Act II, Scene III, a 7-minute scene + research on homelessness and poverty, was presented on March 27th, 2020 at CSUNposium, an interdisciplinary campus-wide symposium competition.
ACT I, SCENE III of
“Because It’s Sunny in LA (Especially on Skid Row)” was submitted to the Kennedy Center for National Playwriting Program competition and won BEST PLAY AWARD for the 10-minute play category in region 8. Region 8 consists of Central and Southern California, Nevada, Utah, Arizona, Guam. and Hawaii. It went on to be considered as a national semi-finalist as one of the top 16 plays in the Country for the Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival in 2020. LINK: News Story! Then the pandemic hit and the National 2020 Festival in D.C. was canceled.
On February 15th, 2020, a ten minute staged reading of ACT I, SCENE III of “Because It’s Sunny in LA (Especially on Skid Row)” was performed live at the Titan Theatre at the 52nd Kennedy Center College Theatre Festival at California State University, Fullerton.
2019
ACT III, Scene I had a staged reading with full lighting, music, and sound in front of a live audience at the Northridge Playwrights’ Workshop in the Fall of 2019.
Thaddeus Nagey (Playwright) was also invited to the Mid-America Theatre Conference (MATC, Chicago, IL), the 44th Annual Comparative Drama Conference (Orlando, Florida), NYU, CUNY, and numerous theatre companies to present my research and talk about the plays that I have written. I will continue to address these issues and attempt to produce these messages of social change all across our sacred planet.
2018
Wrote a poem about a homeless veteran recounting his experience of unloading human remains from the Iraq and Afghanistan wars on a daily. Converted it to emulate Shakespearean style pentameter sonnets, 10 syllables per line. This poem was later expanded into a scene, workshopped, staged in a reading and published.
“There was a time when I lived out of my car and on the street while I was being cast for television, film, and commercial acting gigs. In my second semester of graduate school at Cal. State Northridge, I was introduced to L.A.P.D. theatre company. Soon after, I found myself working with theatre as a tool for social change & homeless on skid row in downtown L.A. developing plays, working as an acting coach, production assistant and stage managing.” -Thaddeus Nagey, (Creator).
OTHER RESOURCES
You can read Thaddeus Nagey’s 101 page dissertation on applied theatre intervention with homelessness here for FREE. There is also a downloadable digital sample of a scene from the play, published by the Northridge Review.
Link: https://csun.academia.edu/ThaddeusNagey
It also inspired me to apply for CSUNposium at California State University, again in the Spring of 2020. For CSUNposium, I presented academic research integrated with a short performance about the homelessness in LA with some of the essence and spirit of this play that I have written. The goal is to never write something substantial, just to have it sit on a shelf, never to be read or seen again. I write about important social and environmental topics in order for them to be read and brought to life. I believe one of the most important aspects that differentiates playwriting from other methods of writing, is the ability to bring a play to life with human interaction and participation, on and off stage. This production is presented by Social Learning Actualized Masterpieces (S.L.AM.) a subsidiary of Telemedia Enterprises, a production company focused on creating projects that are a benefit for social justice and cultural change. Our four primary issue focuses are community engagement for poverty, homelessness, climate change and pollution.
News articles, statistics, and information:
1. https://theintercept.com/2015/07/25/criminalizing-homelessness-in-los-angeles/
2. https://la.lawsoup.org/legal-guides/homelessness/
3. https://theintercept.com/2015/07/25/criminalizing-homelessness-in-los-angeles/
4. https://calmatters.org/housing/2018/06/homeless-in-california-what-the-data-reveals
5. https://www.usnews.com/news/healthiest-communities/articles/2019-04-
23/homelessdying-in-record-numbers-on-the-streets-of-losangeles?fbclid=
6. https://www.lahsa.org/
7. https://www.lapovertydept.org/
8. https://www.usich.gov/homelessness-statistics/ca/
9. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/man-dead-after-skid-row-shooting-involving-lapd/
10. https://lafla.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/00000001-FINAL.pdf
11. https://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/local/
downtown-la-homeless-shelter-second-coronavirus-outbreak/2447012/
12.https://shou.senate.ca.gov/sites/shou.senate.ca.gov/files/
Homelessness%20in%20CA%202020%20Numbers.pdf
13.https://www.laalmanac.com/social/so14.php#race
14. https://calmatters.org/newsletters/whatmatters/2022/
12/california-homeless-count-2/
15. https://www.lahsa.org/documents?id=6532-countywide-geography-summary
A FULL-LENGTH DARK COMEDY MUSICAL PLAY
SYNOPSIS and JUSTIFICATION
“Because It’s Sunny in LA (Especially on Skid Row)” is a three-act dark comedy musical. This full-length original play is about the severe nature of homelessness in Los Angeles. Follows five homeless characters and their stories living on Skid Row in Los Angeles. Every person has a different reason why they are homeless. U.S. News and World Report recently published that nearly 1000 people every year die from issues of homelessness in LA. That’s an average of 2-3 people per day (Kaiser, 2019). During the pandemic, this number rose to over 5 people a day.
This project is a WORLD PREMIER at the Hollywood Hudson Backstage Theatre.
The play consists of five main characters (plus ensemble) who each have an individual and unique story as to the reasons they arrived at homelessness. The play touches on issues of family, addiction, mental and physical illness, veterans’ issues, security issues, and economic, gender, and racial inequalities. The idea for this play came from my own struggles with homelessness for nearly a decade (on and off) of my adult life and childhood. My love for theatre, music, and performance often collided with my need for food and shelter.
This play brings to light some of the obstacles and perspectives that have perpetuated their homelessness and assists an audience in becoming more attune and empathetic to issues of homelessness in Los Angeles. The goal for this project was to write a full-length play about homeless issues in Los Angeles and submit it to theatre festivals and symposiums across the United States. I started working on the concept for this play in 2018 and wanted it to be a form of community involvement to raise awareness, assist in systematically changing out culture through theatre and the arts and to help FUNDRAISE for local community organizations that work on fighting issues of systemic homelessness and poverty. Part of the proceeds will go to raise money for homeless shelters and centers focused on alleviating poverty. Technically, the way the play is written, its components and mechanisms can be scaled, shared, and performed in other communities around the country that are also suffering from issues of homelessness (e.g. Seattle, Chicago, and New York).
The current need to address homeless issues in California and Los Angeles are paramount. Aside from climate change, homelessness in California is the number one humanitarian crisis that we are facing on our current timeline. According to United States Interagency Council on Homelessness and the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority, there are nearly 130k documented homeless people in that state of California (USICH, 2018), over 60,000 documented homeless people in Los Angeles, and nearly 20k on Skid Row in downtown L.A. (LAHSA, 2020). By 2022, these numbers increased dramatically, with over 172,000 documented homeless in California, close to 70,000 in LA County and over 50,000 in the city of Los Angeles.
According to the Lapovertydept.org: In the past 25 years more than 40 former flop-house hotels have been transformed by non-profits to provide safe, affordable, permanent housing and this housing stock has been preserved in large part due to the organized civic engagement of Skid Row residents. The result: today 3/4 of the 20,000 people living in this 55-block downtown neighborhood, are formerly homeless people, they include children, elderly, women, families, veterans, a large and active drug recovery community, those with mental and physical disabilities, and people recovering from incarceration. Part of the goal and process of writing this play was to try and exemplify the effectiveness and impact of theatre that actively engages and involves an audience in regard to homelessness issues in LA. The writing of this play was heavily influenced by theatrical techniques used by many theatre practitioners including Dr. Peter O’Conner (an Applied Theatre expert), John Malpede and L.A.P.D., Augusto Boal, Bertolt Brecht’s estrangement and alienation, Antonin Artaud’s Theatre of Cruelty and others to effectively solve and address homelessness issues.
I used Applied Theatre research, scholarly journal articles, news stories, real life testimonials from conversations with homeless people on Skid Row, and a variety of books and literature. I would eventually like to submit this play to multiple Theatre festivals and cast the entire production with people that have experienced homelessness in their lives. The process of writing this play became a study that investigated the effectiveness of drama as a tool for social change. It spurred my interest and decision to write my dissertation on how performance can intervene and curb issues of homelessness.
