“Our Lady of 7-Eleven” is a brand-new musical that will premiere on Thursday, November 21 in the Black Box Theater in Malone Hall at 7 p.m. The two-person, one-act musical was written by TROY’s Tommy Newman and NYC-based artist Devanand Janki.

TROY Theatre and Dance students got the opportunity to workshop the musical, which is similar to work that is done in bigger cities, giving them invaluable experience and tools they can use long after graduation.

Newman and Janki met in 2010 working in New York City. The idea for “Our Lady of 7-Eleven” came to them after Janki’s theater company, Live & In Color, worked on a musical with similar themes.

“We started talking about what the next musical might be, and Dev has this great idea that the main characters were stuck somewhere on New Year’s Eve,” Newman said. “We decided on a 7-Eleven where the Virgin Mary shows up, and drama ensues. We didn’t have more to the story than that, but that was a conversation that we had in 2021. But this year, we started working on this piece in June, and we had our first draft of the script. After the semester started, we needed a project for our second stage space, and I offered that we workshop this show. It’s been exciting and a lot of fun to work with students on new work.”

“A musical takes a lot of work; most Broadway shows take 10 years to even get to production,” Janki said. “It takes many steps, but Tommy works really fast, as do I, and we said ‘let’s get it done.’ We started brainstorming ideas for the show and we did a couple of Zoom readings just to hear it out loud. Tommy just finished the songs for the show a few weeks ago, and now it’s in the actor’s hands.”

Themes featured in the production are love, loss, friendship and motherhood. Newman are Janki and thrilled to see this musical come to life with the help, talent and hard work of the students involved.

“They’re so hardworking and it’s been a bit of shock for them because, while I’m also an educator, I treat everyone like I would a Broadway actor,” Janki said. “I’m hoping to give them as much information as I can. It’s also great for me to learn because half of it is workshopping the show, but I’m also teaching them in terms of how it might work. Young artists will probably spend most of their careers doing readings like this and developing work. I think it’s such a great thing for colleges to do this because it flexes a completely different muscle for them, and it prepares them for what they will do.”

While it’s been a learning experience for everyone involved, Newman says that workshopping musicals like this, with the resources that you have, is a low-stakes way to see it play out on stage.

“There’s not really a set, we also have minimal costuming and there’s very few props that we’re incorporating,” said Newman. “We’re asking the audience to use their imagination and go along with the idea that we’re just presenting this for the story. In the sound design, we have included a lot of our international students, there are quite a few international sections in the piece. We’ve got a faculty member, Dr. Hui-Ting Yang, who has a part in this production as well. A student has also done the lighting design and it’s beautiful.”

“Our Lady of 7-Eleven” performances will be held until Sunday, November 24. Tickets are $5 and can be purchased here.