HISTORY OF DEVELOPMENT
She Reached for Heaven received readings at Nashville Repertory Theatre's Ingram New Works Festival in June 2023, and Red Mountain Theatre Company's Human Rights New Works Festival in September 2023. We have developed She Reached for Heaven at the 2019 Rhinebeck Writers Retreat and a residency at the Warren Miller Center for the Performing Arts. We presented songs from the show at the New York Theater Barn New Works Series in April 2021, and held a table reading at the New York SongSpace in December 2021. The song “Catch Me” was selected for the 2021 Kurt Weill Foundation Lotte Lenya Songbook Competition Award. She Reached for Heaven was a semi-finalist for the 2022 O’Neill Musical Theatre Conference.
synopsis
She Reached for Heaven is an original musical inspired by Johann Hari’s TED talk “Everything You Know about Addiction is Wrong,” which posits the opposite of addiction isn’t sobriety, it’s connection.
High school junior Jes Holt feels disconnected from her friends and dad after the death of her mom. When Jes sprains her arm at cheer practice and gets prescribed the opioid hydrocodone, she meets Cody, the most exciting person she's ever known. We soon learn Cody is the personification of the drug, and while he at first seems to give Jes everything she’s needing, he destroys her life in the process.
Set against the backdrop of the greatest drug crisis in our country’s history, She Reached for Heaven is a coming-of-age story about the devastations of addiction, and one woman’s journey to choose life rather than escape it.