JANE OF THE JUNGLE book and lyrics by Karen Zacarias music by Deborah Wicks La Puma directed by Juliette Carrillo World Premiere May 25 - June 10, 2012 Theatre for Young Audiences Julianne Argyros Stage
Jane is an ordinary suburban girl, complete with a really nice mom and a bratty little brother. But Jane is on the verge of some big changes. Middle school is looming, and that's both exciting and a little scary. And yet nothing compares with the jolt she gets when she wakes up one morning to discover she has acquired spots, furry ears and a tail! Not only that, but her neighborhood seems to be turning into a jungle! This delightfully inventive new musical takes a wild and wonderful approach to everything kids have to go through before they're truly “grown up.”
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Playwright Bio
Karen Zacarias' plays have been produced throughout the United States and in Canada, Europe and the Caribbean. Her play The Sins of Sor Juana was the winner of the Charles MacArthur Award for Outstanding New Play at the 2000 Helen Hayes Awards and the 1998 Hispanic Playwrights' Project at SCR. She is also winner of the 1998 D.C. Mayor's Award for Outstanding Emerging Artist and a finalist at the Eugene O'Neill National Playwrights' Conference and the Jane Chambers National Women's Playwrights' Competition. Among her other produced plays are The Bare-chested Man, Blue Buick in My Driveway and A Rope Through the Fixture. Her plays for young people include the long-running hit The Magical Piñata (first-prize winner at the Sixth Annual National Children's Theater Festival at Actor's Playhouse), Choosing Nine, The 13th Summer of William and Pilar and a new adaptation of Ferdinand the Bull. She has had commissions from Woolly Mammoth Theatre, SCR and Imagination Stage. She is the founder and artistic director of Young Playwrights' Theater, a non-profit organization dedicated to fostering literacy, dialogue and conflict resolution through playwriting in inner-city schools.
Deborah Wicks La Puma is a composer, music director and performer. Her awards include the Jane Chambers Playwriting Award, the Robert M. Golden Award, a National Endowment for the Arts New American Works grant, a Helen Hayes nomination for Outstanding Musical Direction and a Silver Parent's Choice Award. She has twice won the Actor's Playhouse National Children's Theatre Festival. She has worked across the country including at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, John Houston Studio Theatre, Alliance Theatre, Goodman Theatre, Imagination Stage, Signature Theatre, TheatreWorks (Hartford), TheatreWorks (Palo Alto), Barrington Stage Company and Michigan's Interlochen Center for the Arts. La Puma received her MFA from NYU's Tisch School of the Arts, her BA from Stanford University and studied folk music with Alfredo Lopez, musicologist at La Universidad de Baja California.
