Kenita R. Miller to Star in Animal Wisdom by Heather Christian Off-Broadway

Off-Broadway's Signature Theatre will present Heather Christian's musical work Animal Wisdom May 5-June 14, in a new staging directed by Keenan Tyler Oliphant and starring Kenita R. Miller (for colored girls...).

The autobiographical work has Christian exploring her family history, and why she is able to see ghosts. Christian played herself when the piece premiered at Bushwick Starr in 2017 and in a subsequent Washington, D.C. production. She's newly reconceived the work for other performers. Emma Duncan will star for select matinees. Also featured will be a band including cellist El Beh, music director and pianist Alexandra Crosby, violinist Francesca Dawis, percussionist Caro Moore, bassist Kris Saint-Louis, and guitarist Zack Zaromatidis.

The production bookends Signature's season with Off-Broadway encore runs of works by Christian. The season opened with her 2022 musical work Oratorio for Living Things.

READ: Heather Christian Is Redefining the Musical

Animal Wisdom will feature scenic design by Emmie Finckel, costume design by Brenda Abbandandolo, lighting design by Masha Tsimring, and sound design by Nick Kourtides. Mahayla Laurence is associate director, and Devin Day will serve as production stage manager.

“I wrote Animal Wisdom because I felt like I had to get something out of me," says Christian in a statement. "Some of the ghosts in my life showed up because the supernatural is real and some of those ghosts weren’t ghosts but whiffs of past trauma I hadn’t dealt with that manifested psychologically. And some of it was: I’m a musician and musical space is very squidgy. So I wrote it around this question of, am I haunted, or am I ill, or am I gifted? I wrote the show to save my own life, and performing it felt like an exorcism. I’m excited to hand it off to other performers: by the possibility of someone else stepping into it and showing me what’s there. Because I’ve only been deep in it; I’ve never seen it.”

“In all of Heather’s work, she’s asking these incredibly large, expansive questions around existence and the human relationship to life in all its myriad truths and evasiveness," adds Oliphant. "When she asked me to remount the piece in a new production, I didn’t fully realize how spiritually awake the work was, with not only Heather’s life-force, but also with so much unknowable energy that enters the room. In workshops, auditions, and even just meetings, I’ve noted so many times when the air changes. What is that? I don’t know yet, but the line that I hold onto as we’re making this piece is ‘Once I throw my ghost into the ground, will there still be songs for those that want me around?’ And I can’t help but think about what would happen if we as individuals, as families, as communities, as nations could place our ghosts somewhere and really look at them and really see them for all their truths and not look away or cover our eyes—what freedom would come? That's the question I’m leading with.”

READ: Composer Heather Christian on What's It Like to Be Told You've Won $800,000

Tickets are at SignatureTheatre.org.