Kirsten Childs, a Festival alumna for The Bubbly Black Girl Sheds Her Chameleon Skin (Fest ’98) and Funked Up Fairy Tales (Fest ’12), is well known for her imaginative stories, and her latest musical certainly lives up to that reputation. Supported by a production grant from the National Fund for New Musicals, Childs’ Bella: An American Tall Tale had its world premiere at NAMT member Dallas Theater Center, and the production is now playing in New York at member theatre Playwrights Horizons. American Theatre recently published a feature on Childs, her latest production and her views on the theatre.
“The musical theatre form can lift you to such a wonderful place,” Childs testifies. “And it’s my personal and political goal to be uplifting, without needing to give people rose-colored glasses, without needing to let the truth be swept under the carpet, and without pretending that awful things don’t exist.”
Read the full profile the American Theatre website. Interested in learning more about how the project came to be? Check out our interview with Childs’ from last year.