Gold
Book and Music By: Jess Newman
Book and Lyrics By: Richard Lindenfelzer
Lea King knows she needs to turn her life around, she just hasn't found the thing that's going to do it. After a nasty fight with her Uncle Ethyl, she runs away and accidentally winds up in middle-of-nowhere Red River, Colorado, a rural town with a reputation for "gold tourism." Legend has it gold's buried there from the 1800s, so when Lea meets teenage local Corey, she ropes him into driving her around on a quest to find the most elusive treasure in all the West: "Faith's Gold."
Meanwhile, in 1870 Colorado, a fisherwoman named Faith longs for a civilized life out east. When traveling widower Bartholomew claims to know how to mine unseen gold from underneath the ground, she wonders if he might be her way out.
Both timelines converge when Lea is forced to reckon with her increasingly dangerous behavior, and she realizes that Faith's Quest might not be what it seems.
Gold is a coming of age adventure about dark obsessions, local legends, and what happens when we seek validation outside of ourselves. The contemporary pop/rock score is infused with country/western and Americana to show how the past and the present collide in everyday yet unsuspecting ways.
DEVELOPMENT:
GOLD was presented in its first incarnation as a ninety-minute, 29-hour AEA reading as part of NYU Tisch School's Graduate Musical Theatre Writing Program under the advisorship of Tony nominee Mel Marvin . It's currently being developed into a full-length piece with Neil Gooding Productions.
AWARDS
GOLD is a semifinalist for the 2020 Eugene O'Neill Music Theatre Conference.