PEAK Performances is currently workshopping Daniel Henri Emond’s rock opera Kill the Whale—a reimagining of Herman Melville’s Moby Dick—at the Alexander Kasser Theater on the Montclair State University campus in Montclair, New Jersey.
The cast of the private workshop includes Amber Gray (Here We Are) and Grace McLean (Suffs). No presentation of the musical will be given at this time. Gray and McLean were both part of an April concert presentation of the musical at Joe's Pub.
“When I started writing Kill The Whale, it was my hope in using the classic American text of Moby Dick and bringing it into the modern zeitgeist to elevate the material and explore contemporary themes of inclusion, conversations of gender, stardom, and power dynamics, and the way they shift based on the bodies that inhabit the world,” said Emond in an earlier statement.
Kill the Whale centers on Ishmael, a young rocker with an unknown past, who meets the hiphop harpooner Q. They join Peak-Wow, the Whaleship-rock band led by steel-eyed frontwoman Ahab, who sets her crew upon a course to kill the gigantic sperm whale that maimed her, a plan opposed by Ahab's first mate, Starbuck.
Composer-lyricist-librettist Emond is a 2023 Jonathan Larson grant recipient, a 2023 Saw recording grant recipient, the recipient of a 2023 NYFA QAF grant, and a 2023 CREATE finalist with the American Composer's Forum. He regularly tours with the Blue-Eyed Bettys as a banjoist.
The Kill the Whale workshop is the result of PEAK’s new commitment to the development of new works of musical theatre. As part of its 2024-2025 season, PEAK will produce a concert version of Michael John LaChiusa’s Queen of the Mist in February 2025. Wiley Hausam is the director of PEAK.
