Teeth: A Coming-Of-Rage Musical Comedy - Paperback

by Michael R. Jackson (Author), Anna K. Jacobs (Author)

"[Teeth is] really a show not about vagina dentata but about the cancerous cycles of self-loathing, misogyny, and violence that fester at the heart of purity culture. Well, it's also about vagina dentata." --Vulture

Dawn O'Keefe is an Evangelical teen with a bizarre secret: two rows of gleaming white teeth perfectly placed to preserve her chastity. When the supposedly upright Christian men around her prove more interested in taking advantage of her body than in protecting it, they quickly learn to keep their hands (and other appendages) to themselves. From Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award winner Michael R. Jackson (A Strange Loop) and Anna K. Jacobs (POP!), and based on the controversial cult classic film of the same name, Teeth is a toe-tapping, gut-busting, musical satire that gets under the skin of patriarchy and our sex-obsessed and sex-repressed society.

Author Biography

Michael R. Jackson was one of Time magazine's 100 most influential people of 2022. His Pulitzer Prize- and New York Drama Critics' Circle-winning A Strange Loop (which had its 2019 world premiere at Playwrights Horizons in association with Page 73 Productions) received 11 Tony nominations in 2022, and was called a full-on laparoscopy of the heart, soul, and loins as well as a gutsy, jubilantly anguished musical with infectious melodies by Ben Brantley for The New York Times. In addition to A Strange Loop, he also wrote book, music, and lyrics for White Girl in Danger, and the book and lyrics for Teeth, which opened at New World Stages in Fall 2024. Awards and associations include: a New Professional Theatre Festival Award, a Jonathan Larson Grant, a Lincoln Center Emerging Artist Award, an ASCAP Foundation Harold Adamson Lyric Award, a Whiting Award, the Helen Merrill Award for Playwriting, an Outer Critics Circle Award, a Drama Desk Award, an Obie Award, a Fred Ebb Award, a Windham-Campbell Prize, a Dramatist Guild Fellowship, and he is an alum of Page 73's Interstate 73 Writers Group.

Anna K. Jacobs is a Jonathan Larson and Billie Burke Ziegfeld Award-winning composer, lyricist, and book writer. In collaboration with Michael R. Jackson, she wrote the music and co-wrote the book for the Drama Desk Award and Lucille Lortel-nominated musical Teeth, which Vulture hailed as a "bloody, bawdy musical with banging songs." It ran off-Broadway at Playwrights Horizons and New World Stages, and an original cast recording has been released on Yellow Sound Label. Anna's stage adaptation of Moana is in residence at the Walt Disney Theatre onboard the Disney Treasure. Her other musicals include POP! (Yale Rep, Pittsburgh City Theatre, Studio Theatre; CT Critics Circle Award, Best Production of a Musical), Anytown (George Street Playhouse), Harmony, Kansas (Diversionary Theatre; Craig Noel Award nomination, Outstanding New Musical and Outstanding New Score), and Witnesses (California Center for the Arts; Craig Noel Award, Outstanding New Musical). In collaboration with playwright Anna Ziegler, she is also writing A House Without Windows, a musical about the life and disappearance of child prodigy author, Barbara Newhall Follett. Anna has taught musical theatre writing to students at Princeton, the New School, the New York Youth Symphony, and for the Johnny Mercer Foundation, and received her MFA in Musical Theatre Writing from NYU-Tisch. Originally from Sydney, Australia, she has called Brooklyn home since 2006.