With book, music and lyrics by Scott Miller, JOHNNY APPLEWEED is a stoner political satire, the first musical ever to make a serious case for the spiritual, existential, and psychological properties of marijuana. Through the lens of this pot-friendly worldview, the show takes aim at issues like American party politics, the War on Terror, the American culture of violence, gay marriage, the legalization of marijuana, sexual oppression, and increasingly rabid American religious fanaticism, all through the eyes of the laidback, neo-mythic purveyor of pot, Johnny Appleweed, an itinerant philosopher-stoner, who argues that only through the mind-expanding properties of marijuana can we truly see the Larger Truths, so that we can finally solve our problems and move our civilization forward. A heady mix of Hair, The Daily Show, the films of Kevin Smith, Waiting for Godot, and The Wizard of Oz, the show debuted in 2006. Songs include "The Ballad of Johnny Appleweed," "The Scheme of Things," "Fucking Up America," "Cannabis Dei," "Weird Isn't Weird," "Going to See the President," "Jesus On the Tube," "A Prayer for Harvard," "Barney," "Fannie Mae's Lament," "Use Your Brain," "Comes a Time," "Holy Fucking Shit," "Here's President Birch," "It's a Leader's Job," "A Prayer for Wal-Mart," "I Tapped That Ass," "It's Up to Us," "I'm a Real Man," "You May Be a Good Man," "What Would Jesus Do?", and "A Great Big Cloud of Smoke."
Author Biography:
New Line Theatre artistic director Scott Miller has been writing and directing musicals since 1981, and he founded New Line Theatre in 1991. He was honored in 2014 with a St. Louis Theater Circle Award for his body of work with New Line, and American Theatre magazine wrote, "Miller is, in his quietly ornery Midwestern way, advancing and reifying the American musical-theatre form as it has come kicking and screaming into the 21st century." He has written the book, music, and lyrics for nine musicals, as well as two plays. His play Head Games has been produced in St. Louis, Los Angeles, London, and at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in Scotland. Miller has written several books about musical theatre, including From Assassins to West Side Story; Deconstructing Harold Hill; Rebels with Applause; Let the Sun Shine In: The Genius of HAIR; Strike Up the Band: A New History of Musical Theatre; and Sex, Drugs, Rock & Roll, and Musicals. For fifteen years, he co-hosted the radio show Break a Leg: Theatre in St. Louis and Beyond on KDHX, and now he hosts the theatre podcast Stage Grok, available on iTunes.
