Neighbors’ Musical About Foreclosure, Family & Love Selected For BRIC Residency

Roy Nathanson and Lloyd Miller. Photograph by Charna Meyers, via Kickstarter.

We’ve got exciting news: the musical our neighbors Lloyd H. Miller and Roy Nathanson have been working on for more than two years, “Trashed Out,” was recently chosen for a residency at BRIC – and the two musicians have launched a Kickstarter to fund the residency.

“Trashed Out” is based on Paul Reyes‘ nonfiction book, “Exiles in Eden,” an account of how the foreclosure crisis impacted people and communities in Florida, and it will feature Roy’s longtime band, the Jazz Passengers. Plus, Lloyd (who you can see performing at Lark Café at 10 and 11 on Friday mornings) told us today that Ari Brand, star of the acclaimed Off Broadway production “My Name is Asher Lev,” is going to play the lead.

The production will be “an interactive show where members of the band step forward to play roles and displaced characters show up unexpectedly to help the performers tell their stories of foreclosure, homelessness, heartbreak, and love,” the Kickstarter page says.

On their kickstarter page, Roy explains why they wanted to write a musical based on “Exiles in Eden:”

I guess it sounds a little crazy to write a musical about the foreclosure crisis in Florida but for years I thought about my own family’s Florida experience of economic collapse when I was a teenager and how it was a common story. Then a few years ago my friend Lloyd Miller gave me Paul Reyes’ incredible book about how the mortgage crisis played out in Tampa and other places in Florida. Reyes worked with his dad to trash out these houses that were foreclosed –- There were tons of ’em in 2008 — he and his guys would cart people’s stuff out from their houses – utility bills, old records, books– all the personal artifacts of people’s lives. And you see them drag this stuff out while snakes and armadillos are climbing around in the backyard. And this whole story is told in the context of the history of Florida.

So I read this incredible story and thought about my crazy band the Jazz Passengers and how for almost 30 years now we’ve told lots of stories with words and music. And I thought… the Jazz Passengers and Lloyd, who’s a terrific writer, could maybe tell this amazing story in a way journalism and other modes of storytelling can’t. That we could sing these people’s stories in a way that they might be heard slightly differently.

So we’ve adapted this story into a musical — a foreclosure musical about how these normal Americans lost their homes and their dignity in this state that’s always been a big real estate Ponzi scheme.

And so we have romance and singing and we’re playing a bunch of instruments and hoping by opening ears in a different way maybe it will be a little help in avoiding the next big sinkhole. And we hope it will be beautiful.

The Jazz Passengers. Photo via Kickstarter.

The residency will last for 10 days, beginning on October 30, and will culminate in two intimate work-in progress performances on November 7 and 8. And while BRIC has a wonderful space with great equipment and a tech crew to support their artists, they have little money to offer to pay the musicians and actors, fund video projections that are essential to the show, build props, and more – which is where the Kickstarter comes in.

To learn more about the project, and to donate, you can see their Kickstarter page here. If you donate, you can get tickets to the show, as well as a number of other rewards, including:

• Signed copies of classic Passengers albums.

• Signed Trashed Out posters designed by Greg Bunch.

• Tickets to a Central Park West reception with the Jazz Passengers.

• A private five-course dinner for you and 12 of your friends, plus the Jazz Passengers and Lloyd at City Winery.

• A birthday party performance for a kid by Lloyd.