Musical Theatre Projects
Reporting Live
Book, Music, and Lyrics by Michael Finke
Christine Chubbuck was a real-life television journalist based in Sarasota, Florida. She was smart, young, and passionate about her work. However, in 1974, Christine made history by choosing to violently take her own life while live on-the-air. Reporting Live is a dramatic biographical fantasy that tells the astonishing true story of Christine while at the same time following her on a fictional journey in an afterlife she never expected to find.
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Selected for the New York Musical Theatre Festival
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Finalist for the ASCAP Musical Theatre Workshop
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Concept Album recorded with live 22-piece orchestra at Dubway Studios
Powerline Road is a noir musical thriller that follows four different stories of four Floridians during an incredibly turbulent 24 hours. There’s Rachel (an affluent housewife on the run), Jacob (an up-and-coming campaign press secretary), David (a newly released convict), and Karen (a part-time Wendy’s cashier/full-time Twitter troll). Driven by sung-through choral narration and a 1980’s inspired synthwave score, these seemingly separate individuals come to life as they face multiple threats ranging from the twisted world of social media to the corruption of the private prison industrial complex, all while discovering what it means to take power into their own hands.
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Finalist for the Dramatists Guild Fellowship
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Semi-Finalist for the O’Neill National Music Theatre Conference
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Off-Broadway development production at A.R.T./New York produced by Theatre Now
Powerline Road
Book, Music, and Lyrics by Michael Finke
GET WHAT YOU WANT
The Songs of Michael Finke
"Get What You Want - the songs of Michael Finke"
is Michael's debut musical theatre album of stand-alone songs that tell the stories of desperate people going to extreme lengths to get what they most want out of life.
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Featuring 20 musicians and 18 vocalists, the album was released by Center Stage Records and features artists Kate Rockwell, Jelani Remy, Justin David Sullivan, Donna Lynne Champlin, Talia Suskauer, Tommy Kaiser, and many more.
161st Street – A New York Musical is based on the true story of Ray Negron. In the summer of 1973, Ray, a Puerto Rican teenager from Queens New York, had his life turned upside down when George Steinbrenner caught him graffitiing the side of Yankee Stadium. But instead of being arrested, Ray was hired as a bat boy for the Yankees, forever changing his life as his greatest heroes became his greatest friends and mentors. But as Ray seems to be living his dream life, a struggling city, a burning Bronx, and a troubled family keep finding ways of catching up with him.
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Currently in commerical development with Holey Shirts Productions
161st Street
A New York Musical
Book by Michael Finke,
Music and Lyrics by Andrew David Sotomayor and Michael Finke
Dead Flowers
a musical short
Book, Music, and Lyrics by Michael Finke
At age 82, Polly Patolsky believes she is meant to spend the rest of her days with her unfaithful and manipulative husband, Charlie. But on the worst day of her life (and her marriage), Polly reaches a breaking point and finds strength and courage in a strange place with an unlikely new friend... a drag queen and a Boca Raton dive bar.
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Selected for 2018 Theatre Now Soundbites Festival of 10-Minute Musicals
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Winner - Best Choreography (Sidney Erik Wright)
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Published in the Theatre Now Anthology of 10-Minute Musicals
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Available for licensing with Music Theatre International in both English and Spanish
Caroline of Brunswick and George IV were married on April 8, 1795. They were also very reluctant to do so. Caroline and George is an outrageous and epic musical operetta that follows the trials and tribulations of the not-so-happy couple as they push through their marriages, affairs, addictions, flatulence, separations, and their journey towards the crown of England and forever changing a
nation along the way.
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Winner of the New Musicals Inc. Search for New Musicals
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Finalist for the ASCAP Musical Theatre Workshop
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Semi-Finalist for the O’Neill National Music Theatre Conference
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Selections recorded by the Czech National Symphony Orchestra in Prague
Caroline and George
(an absurd love story but not of the above mentioned names)
Book, Music, and Lyrics by Michael Finke
Surrounded By the Water
Book, Music, and Lyrics by Michael Finke
Meghan and her roommates planned a relaxing day in their Upper East Side apartment while riding out Hurricane Sandy. But has her friends dive into a day of inebriated bliss, Meghan is wrestling with an internal force of nature she can’t explain. Surrounded By the Water is a dramatic sung-through musical done nearly in real time about the relationship between our own mental health and the accelerating speed at which the world expects us to operate. After all, what happens when the world forces us to truly slow down?
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"Surrounded By the Water" has been developed by
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Musical Theatre Heritage in Kansas City, Missouri​
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Merrimack Repertory Company in Merrimack, Massachusetts
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Musical Theatre Factory in New York, New York
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OutVisible Theatre Company in Detroit, Michigan
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Additional Projects
Christmas in
Afghanistan
Book and Lyrics by Addison Blu
Music and Lyrics by Michael Finke
A Single Vibration
Book by Robert Mitchell
Music and Lyrics by Michael Finke
New Musicals Inc. commissioned
“So Proudly We Hailed”, a series of
1-person musicals each co-written by a veteran of the armed forces.
“A Single Vibration” is the true story of a veteran who is haunted by the vibrations of rocket fire and explosions he endured in Kandahar. “Christmas in Afghanistan” tells the story of a soldier stationed in Afghanistan who accidentally buys a truckful of bread on Christmas Eve.
Robert Mitchum High
a one-act musical comedy
Book by Sean Ireland
Music and Lyrics by Michael Finke
When a freak accident occurs during a Dungeons and Dragons reenactment resulting in the death of the captain of the football team, three teenage girls are forced to work together and clean up the mess they're in, resulting in Wiccan rituals and raging zombie football players.
The Untitled Kansas Project
CURRENTLY IN DEVELOPMENT
James, a married Congressman from Kansas, and Ryker, an erotic massage therapist, who have had an intimate yet professional working relationship for the past two years. Every other month James discretely sets up an appointment, always in a different motel and never in the same town twice. But eventually Ryker receives a call from James to book an appointment but with a curious request. And when they meet at the Cottonwood Inn in the little town of Phillipsburg, Kansas, the two men discover they’re in more danger than they ever could have imagined.
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Finalist for the Dramatists Guild Fellowship
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Finalist for Live and In Living Color Workshop