Thank you to Entertainment News Northwest (ENNW) magazine for doing a cover story on my fourth original full-length musical Pray the Gay Away®. Read the ENNW November 2019 cover story article on their website at https://www.ennw.info/
And a big thank you to Marla Bronstein who took the time to attend our rehearsals and interview cast members in preparation for this story. The world premiere of Pray the Gay Away® the musical will run Nov 8-24, 2019 at the Historic Lincoln Theatre in Mount Vernon, WA. More show info on the official PTGA play site at https://ptgashow.com/
Entertainment News Northwest November 2019 cover story
Pray the Gay Away® at the historic Lincoln Theatre
By Marla Bronstein
Pray the Gay Away (PTGA) is an original musical that is best described as a serious musical comedy. Its world premiere, 3-week run open s November 8, 2019 at the historic Lincoln Theatre in Mount Vernon, WA.
Here are the cast bios and headshots for the world premiere of my fourth original full-length musical, Pray the Gay Away®. The premiere will run Nov. 8-24, 2019 at the Historic Lincoln Theatre in Mount Vernon, WA (USA).
Adia is thrilled to be a part of a Conrad Askland musical for the third time, following Pan the Musical as Tiger Lily and Romeo and Juliet the Musical as Juliet’s Understudy. Adia recently played The Witch in Into the Woods, and Ariel in The Little Mermaid with META Performing Arts. Adia studies classical voice and is a proud member of the Mount Vernon High School Choir program. She would like to thank her parents for always pushing her to be her best, and her grandparents for being her biggest fans.
Adrian Lane (Tyler)
Pray the Gay Away cast
Adrian will be a senior at MVHS as well as a freshman at SVC. He enjoys hiking in his free time and aspires to be a nurse and hopes to keep doing theatre throughout his life. His recent shows include A Chorus Line (SVC), Shakespeare In Love (ACT), Into The Woods (META), and The Little Mermaid (META).
MOUNT VERNON, WA – Theater Arts Guild presents the world premiere of Pray the Gay Away®, a serious musical comedy, November 8-24 at the Lincoln Theatre in Mount Vernon, WA.
Pray the Gay Away® takes place in 1980’s Minnetonka, Minnesota and shows the collision course of two boys being subjected to the controversial practice of gay conversion therapy, the Lutheran Church – Missouri Synod that says “homosexual behavior is intrinsically sinful”, a Youth Pride LGBTQ support group fighting for human rights, and the local community caught in the middle.
For his fourth full-length musical, Conrad Askland, former music director of Cirque du Soleil and Rock of Ages, has focused his satire on the cultural, political and theological forces that surround the painful world of gay conversion therapy and the “pray away the gay” movement. This is a big, full-blooded musical with an irreverently comic heart that is also heart-breaking and emotionally charged. Pray the Gay Away pulls up the carpet to expose the underlying U.S. religious, political and cultural attitudes surrounding homosexuality and our understanding of human rights.
Ria Peth, President of Theater Arts Guild, shares that “Cast members have said a lot already that this show is changing their lives and it hasn’t even gone on stage yet. It’s very well researched. It’s a story based on facts.” Cast member Jennifer Jacobs says, “The story and the music provide a pathway for better and more profound understanding of the barbarism of conversion therapy…” and “It’s beautiful and it’s uncomfortable…”. Cast member Jocelyn Amouria says “While this show is set in the 1980s, everything about it is still relevant and important in today’s society. Even if it helps just one person it’ll have been worth it.”
Pray the Gay Away, a serious musical comedy, performs live at the Lincoln Theatre in Mount Vernon, WA from Nov. 8-24, 2019. Tickets for the show range from $13 to $24 and can be purchased at lincolntheatre.org, by calling the Lincoln Theatre Box Office at 360-336-8955.
World Premiere November 8-24, 2019
Lincoln Theatre – Mount Vernon, WA
>>Ticket Info<<
Theater Arts Guild presents the world premiere of Pray the Gay Away®, a serious musical comedy. This highly anticipated and controversial live stage show packs plenty of blissful sacrilege and politically incorrect mischief into a reflection of U.S. culture that is humorous, beautiful, shocking, sweet, thought-provoking and incredibly heart-breaking.
Pray the Gay Away® takes place in 1980’s Minnetonka, Minnesota and shows the collision course of two boys being subjected to the controversial practice of gay conversion therapy, the Lutheran Church – Missouri Synod that says “homosexual behavior is intrinsically sinful”, a Youth Pride LGBTQ support group fighting for human rights, and the local community caught in the middle.
For his fourth full-length musical, Conrad Askland, former music director of Cirque du Soleil and Rock of Ages, has trained his satirical missile system on the cultural, political and theological forces that surround the painful world of gay conversion therapy and the “pray away the gay” movement. This is a big, full-blooded musical with an irreverently comic heart that is also heart-breaking and emotionally charged. Pray the Gay Away® pulls up the carpet to expose the underlying U.S. religious, political and cultural attitudes surrounding homosexuality and our understanding of human rights.
Possibly God’s second-favorite musical.
Self-rated at PG-13 for mature themes and highly emotional content. A production preview guide is provided on this page.
Presented by Theater Arts Guild
Book, Music and Lyrics by Conrad Askland
Directed by Lindsey Bowen and Gabe Guevara
Choreography by Donna Carroll
Costumes by Kathryn Gildnes
Produced by Matt Bianconi, Kim Turner and Brett Madden
“Juliet’s Death” from Romeo and Juliet the musical by Conrad Askland to words by William Shakespeare. Katherine Fisher as Juliet. Filmed February 2015 at the Historic Lincoln Theater. Visit the RJ musical website at http://www.RJmusical.com
I composed this piece as part of a music production course for my Bachelor’s degree in Interdisciplinary Studies with Berklee College of Music. While taking classes I was on tour as music director with the Cirque du Soleil show Varekai and was fortunate enough to have our violin player from the show, David Piché, record the violin tracks while in Vilnius, Lithuania.
“If I Could Go Anywhere” is a song I wrote back in the late 1990’s. Here is a new recording of the piece paired with photos of Skagit County, WA photographer Gary Brown. Part of our interdisciplinary collaboration of Pacific Northwest farmland photography with my original music for the “Gary Brown and Conrad Askland Project.”
On my tour with the Cirque du Soleil show Varekai, one of our destinations is the Oslo Spektrum arean in Oslo, Norway. The end of August 2017 was able to spend a week with my cousin to trace our ancestry back to my great grandparents on the island of Ona, Norway. It was our “back to our roots” tour.
“Tarragona” is a piano improvisation by Conrad Askland. Recorded July 31, 2017 in Tarragona, Spain.
In this video you can see the far stone wall behind the piano. That stone wall is part of a guard tower that is dated to be at least 800 years old. Used at one point as a guard tower and later as part of a winery.
I thought about the long history of this special place in Spain and let my fingers color the imagination of what I saw in my mind’s eye.
