UNTETHERED, The Musical

Book by Brighid Leonard and Kaitlin Losansky

Music & Lyrics by Madison LeFever, and Co-Writer Sophie Kashman

Synopsis

Freshly divorced and working in a grocery store, Celeste finds comfort and levity in a flirty online relationship with Bee, a rural Magic the Gathering fan in search of community and connection. Untethered is the story of the lengths people will go to avoid painful realities, and those they leave in their wake pursuing a reality that doesn’t exist.

Playbill art by Savannah LeCornu

Watch UNTETHERED: The Reading

Why UNTETHERED?

Since day one, the team prioritized one core theme above all else: queer people are real adults, and real adults make messes. While this sounds like a show that is about being queer, it isn’t - it’s about the process of aligning your actions with your values. Change is difficult, embarrassing, and necessary. These characters don’t have to be queer for this story to exist, which makes their queerness all the more integral.

My Involvement

Untethered started out as a musical revue in collaboration with a club in my undergrad, but when I proposed writing our own musical, we hit the ground running. After cultivating a strong writing team, we realized quickly that this musical was much more than a small project, but a story of substance that deserved lots of time and dedication.

So much of my personal experiences (losing my mom and dad to addiction, being fat, & queer) would inform the music and these characters much earlier than I had realized. That’s what’s so beautiful about Leonard and Losansky as collaborators… they are deeply intuitive and supportive.

Without spoiling the story, this musical touches on more than just queer joy. It is about grief: losing family, friends, lovers, and yourself. Grief is apart of the universal human experience and at the end of the day, sometimes being Untethered is part of the human experience.