Lucille Lortel Theatre Announces 2026 Recipients of the 121 Project

The Lucille Lortel Theatre has named the 2026 recipients of its 121 Project, a tailored musical development program led by Michael Heitzman. Unlike traditional reading series, the 121 Project works directly with writing teams to identify the specific developmental needs of each piece and provide targeted support to move the work forward. More information about the program is available at https://lortel.org/121-project.

This year's cohort comprises five new musicals spanning the Wild West, the Haitian Revolution, 19th-century Chinatown, a chaotic Passover seder, and an intergenerational dance epic. Details on each project and its creative team follow.

Bandit Queen

Bandit Queen features a book and lyrics by Sami Horneff, with book and music by Amanda D'Archangelis. Set in 1902, the musical opens on a troupe of traveling actors presenting "The Arizona Female Bandit," a play about Pearl Hart, the Wild West's most notorious woman outlaw, and the older sister of the play's fictional playwright and star, Katy Davy. When the real Pearl, freshly released from prison, interrupts the performance to dispute the show's version of events, the sisters step into their own roles and relive a shared past shaped by abuse, crime, and addiction. The piece calls for nine versatile performers and features an Americana-inspired score that blends Old West storytelling with contemporary pop theatre.

D'Archangelis and Horneff met in the BMI Lehman Engel Musical Theatre Workshop. Their catalog includes The Radium Girls, co-written with Lisa Mongillo and directed by Tony winner Marissa Jaret Winokur, which is eyeing a world premiere in 2027; Single Rider (Off-Broadway, 2018); Coming Attraction (Wilbury Theatre Group, 2019); and The Break (Omaha Creative Institute, 2018). They are also developing Pandora in Blue Jeans, with a book by Adam Morrison, about "Peyton Place" author Grace Metalious, and Psych, a 1990s spin on Cupid and Psyche commissioned by Wichita State University. The pair are 2019 York Theatre Company New/Emerging/Outstanding Writers, 2024 Playbill Songwriter Series Featured Artists, and 2025 Write Out Loud Contest grand prize winners. More information is available at www.amandadarchangelis.com and www.samihorneff.com, or on Instagram at @darchangelisandhorneff.

Francois & The Rebels: A Punk Rock Ritual

With book, music, and lyrics by Jaime Cepero, Francois & The Rebels is a punk rock ritual performance piece chronicling the 1791–1804 Haitian Revolution, the first successful slave rebellion in history, which resulted in the first Black-led country in the Western Hemisphere and contributed to the eventual end of the transatlantic slave trade. The piece uses the punk rock aesthetic and sound as its access point, framing the genre through what Cepero describes as its inherent Blackness.

Cepero (they/he) is an Afrolatino, queer, non-binary actor, writer, composer, and activist whose songwriting has been called "eye-opening" and "innovative" by Broadway World. Their work has been featured on Broadway Podcast Network's The Musicals of Tomorrow and Playbill and Audible Theater's Songwriter Series, and they are a two-time semifinalist in the Times Square City Songwriting Competition. Artist residencies include National Queer Theater, La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club, Carnegie Hall, the Baryshnikov Arts Center, Joe's Pub, MTF Musicals, and The Public Theater. Francois & The Rebels was a 2022 nominee for the Vivace Award for Theater Artists and a winning finalist for the Philip Seymour Hoffman Relentless Award for Musical Theater. Cepero's organizing work on the 2020 March On Broadway earned two Gold Anthem Awards from the International Academy of Digital Arts & Sciences.

FUSONG

FUSONG, based on Geling Yan's novel "The Lost Daughter of Happiness," features a book and lyrics by Christine Toy Johnson, music by Cecilia Lin, and is conceived and directed by Gabriel Barre. The musical braids together the stories of two Chinese women across two centuries: Fusong, kidnapped from her small village and trafficked into San Francisco's Chinatown in 1866, and Isabel, a contemporary novelist in the divided America of 2025 whose books have been banned and whose sense of place is reshaped by Fusong's story. Their lives intertwine into a shared legacy of resilience and resistance.

Christine Toy Johnson (book and lyrics) is a Tony- and Obie-honored writer, actor, and advocate for inclusion whose work has been developed or produced by Roundabout, Lortel Theatre, Village Theatre, the O'Neill Center, Abingdon, Greater Boston Stage Company, Florida Studio Theatre, Ars Nova, Barrow Group, Prospect Theatre, Weston Playhouse, Musical Theatre West, and Goodspeed Opera House, among others. Her work is housed in the Library of Congress's Asian Pacific American Playwrights Collection and has been published by NoPassport Press, Smith & Kraus, Rowman & Littlefield, and Applause Books. She serves as Treasurer of the Dramatists Guild and hosts the Guild's "Talkback" podcast on Broadway Podcast Network, and is a co-founder of the Asian American Performers Action Coalition (AAPAC) and founder of the Asian American Theatre Artists Collective. More at www.christinetoyjohnson.com.

Cecilia Lin (composer), a graduate of the Royal College of Music in London, is a four-time China Music Award winner for Best Composer of the Year. She has written more than a hundred pop songs for artists including JJ Lin, A-Mei, Gigi Leung, Kelly Chen, Twins, and Eason Chan, with twenty-one of those songs reaching #1 on Chinese Music Radio. Her screen credits include additional material for Disney's High School Musical (Asia). In 2015 she became the first Asian composer signed to the Paris National Symphony Orchestra and the youngest artist ever featured on a national stamp issued by China Post. Since 2018, she has been working in New York as a Broadway composer and producer, earning honors including the Outer Critics Circle Award for Best Musical as a co-producer of Desperate Measures. More at www.cecilialin.com.

Geling Yan, author of the source novel, is among the most acclaimed contemporary novelists and screenwriters writing in Chinese today and is also an established English-language writer. Her novels in English include Little Aunt Crane, The Flowers of War, The Banquet Bug (published in the UK as The Uninvited), and The Lost Daughter of Happiness, translated by Cathy Silber. Her work has been adapted for film by directors including Joan Chen (Xiu Xiu: The Sent-Down Girl), Sylvia Chang (Siao Yu, produced by Ang Lee), and Zhang Yimou, whose The Flowers of War starred Christian Bale, and whose Coming Home was based on her novel The Criminal Lu Yanshi.

Director Gabriel Barre directed and co-authored the original production of Here You Come Again, which has toured the US, UK, and Australia. He directed Amazing Grace on Broadway, and his Off-Broadway credits include original productions of A Sign of the Times, Andrew Lippa's The Wild Party, Summer of '42, john & jen, and Almost, Maine. National tours include Amazing Grace, Pippin, and Cinderella. His regional credits include original productions of Memphis in Boston and San Francisco, as well as revivals of Billy Elliot, Sweeney Todd, and Finian's Rainbow, and numerous new musicals at Goodspeed. Internationally, he has directed in China (Sound of the Silk Road), Mexico (the Mexican premiere of Billy Elliot), Japan (the Japanese premiere of The Scarlet Pimpernel), Korea (the world premiere of Tears of Heaven), Germany, and the Czech Republic, where his work at Prague's Karlin Theater includes Beetlejuice, Carmen, Jesus Christ Superstar, Aida, and Holmes, The Legend. He is currently preparing the world premiere of Reunion, a new musical by Frank Wildhorn and Rinne Groff. As an actor, Barre received a Tony nomination for Best Actor in a Musical.

Next Year in Connecticut!

Next Year in Connecticut!, with book and lyrics by Sarah Rossman and music by Sequoia Sellinger, unfolds over the course of a single, chaotic Passover seder at the home of the Stableman family. As the seder proceeds, Olive represses an eating disorder, Sonya challenges her OCD by participating at the communal table, and Clem grieves her therapy dog, Lionel, who was run over that morning. The evening tips fully into chaos when Mom's suicidal psychotherapy patient, Billy, turns up at the front door, and it is ultimately Billy who helps the family recognize that collective craziness beats going it alone.

Sequoia Sellinger is a collaborative composer in musical theatre and opera based in New York, with an MFA in Musical Theatre Writing from NYU Tisch and a position on the classical composition faculty at Purchase College Conservatory of Music. Her work has been performed at Classic Stage Company, Ars Nova, Joe's Pub, 54 Below, Green Room 42, the College of the Atlantic, Dartmouth, The York Theatre, Musical Theatre Factory, and American Opera Projects. In addition to Next Year in Connecticut!, a 2025 sheNYC Arts selection, 2025 NAMT finalist, 2024 Anna Sosenko Assist Trust grantee, and finalist at both Syracuse New Works New Voices and the Newport NewWorks Festival, her musicals include Earth First! (MacDowell Fellowship) and Gravity of Me Gone (Ars Nova ANT Fest). Her micro-opera It's Noon, Do You Know Where Your House Plants Are? premiered at American Opera Projects in May 2024. She is an alum of the BMI Lehman Engel Musical Theatre Workshop, Prospect Musical Theater Lab, and New Dramatists Composer-Librettist Studio, and a member of the Dramatists Guild and Maestra. More at www.sequoiasellinger.com.

Sarah Rossman is an award-winning librettist, playwright, and performer whose work focuses on narratives about mental illness and trauma. Her work has been performed at Classic Stage Company, Williamstown Theatre Festival, American Repertory Theater, Joe's Pub, The Other Palace in London, 54 Below, and Symphony Space. At the 2025 sheNYC festival, she won Best Book of a Musical and Best Leading Actress, and her podcast episode "Intrusive Thot" premiered at the Radiophrenia Festival in Glasgow. Rossman holds a B.A. in Theatre, Dance, and Media from Harvard and an MFA from NYU Tisch's Graduate Musical Theatre Writing Program. She is a lyricist in the BMI Lehman Engel Musical Theatre Workshop and a member of the Dramatists Guild, Maestra, ASCAP, and SAG-AFTRA. More at www.sarahrossman.com.

OUT THERE

OUT THERE is a sweeping intergenerational dance epic about aging, time, memory, and the chaotic beauty of family. The piece is co-created by director/choreographer William Carlos Angulo, book writer Isaac Gómez, and composer/lyricist Michelle J. Rodriguez, pairing what the team describes as a buoyant, architectural score with a hilariously human book.

William Carlos Angulo (he/they), director and choreographer, is a New York–based director, choreographer, playwright, and educator raised in a Bolivian/Texan household in Chicago. His work centers the creation of culture through music and dance as a means of exploring third-culture identity. Directing credits include TUTS, The Muny, the Steppenwolf LookOut Series, Marriott Theatre, Ars Nova ANT Fest, and Joe's Pub at The Public Theater. Choreography credits include Manhattan Theatre Club, Center Theatre Group, Goodman Theatre, Ford's Theatre, and Chicago Shakespeare Theatre. He serves as Director of Education for Dance Lab New York and was a founding instructor for Broadway Across Borders through the US Department of State's Fulbright Program. He has collaborated with Grammy-winning artists, and his choreography has been tagged on TikTok and Instagram more than 17 million times. He is a member of SDC and the Alliance of Latine Theatre Artists (ALTA), and is represented by the Gersh Agency.

Isaac Gómez (they/them), book writer, is an award-winning Los Angeles–based playwright and screenwriter originally from El Paso, Texas, and Ciudad Juárez, Mexico. They identify as "border Mexican" and as ni'wa, the third gender identity marker of the Rarámuri Indigenous community. They are currently under commission with LCT3, and their plays have been produced, developed, or commissioned by Audible Theater, Steppenwolf, Primary Stages, Denver Center, Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Goodman Theatre, the Alley Theatre, and others. Gómez received the 2018 Dramatists Guild Lanford Wilson Award, the 2017 Jeffry Melnick New Playwright Award at Primary Stages, and an inaugural 3Arts "Make a Wave" grant. Television credits include HBO, Netflix, Apple TV+, Paramount+, and FX, with feature work at Focus Features. They are represented by WME, ReDefine Entertainment, and Granderson Des Rochers, LLP.

Michelle J. "Micha" Rodriguez (she/they), composer and lyricist, is the 2024–2025 Tow Foundation Playwright-in-Residence at the Bushwick Starr and a 2023–2024 Vision Resident at Ars Nova. She is a recipient of the 2022 Helen Merrill Award for Playwriting, a 2022 NYC Women's Fund grant, and the 2020 Van Lier Fellowship at Ars Nova. Raised in the Pacific Northwest and Kentucky by Puerto Rican parents, her work explores children-of-immigrants stories, divinity, queerness, intuition, joy-as-resistance, and healing. Her musical Presencia, for which she served as composer, lyricist, book writer, and performer, recently premiered at the Bushwick Starr in a production with Sol Project, Oye Group, and Musical Theater Factory, with development at BAM and Lincoln Center. Also in development is Raimunda, with book writer Noelle Viñas (Ars Nova, NYSAF). Her music project MICHA was a finalist for NPR's 2018 Tiny Desk Contest with "Nena Nena Nena," which NPR praised for "a bilingual set spanning laid-back southern soul and Latin pop flare." Rodriguez holds a BA from Williams College and is represented by WME.

Additional information on the 121 Project and the Lucille Lortel Theatre's development programs is available at https://lortel.org/121-project.