TEETH is the coming-of-rage horror musical comedy you have been waiting for. Remember that musical about the man-eating vagina? Yeah, we turned that into a musical. Here, co-bookwriter and lyricist Michael R. Jackson (A Strange Loop Tony Award® winner) and co-bookwriter and composer Anna K. Jacobs (POP!) share a note on what to expect from this most unexpected night of theater
TEETH is now in performances at New World Stages in New York City. Buy Tickets Now.
When we began writing TEETH, we knew it would fall into the horror-comedy crosshairs. But as we immersed ourselves further in the world of the show, we realized how quickly belief systems can turn doctrinaire and violent under the right circumstances. For those reasons, we consider TEETH to be a horror piece, and the comedy, which is derived as much from absurdity as it is from deeply uncomfortable truths, is layered on top.
This is a story of one young woman’s experience with sexual shame and desire; the unending ways in which misogyny is heaped upon her and upon her and upon her, until finally she returns the violence she has experienced onto others. Why and how she arrives at that violent place (and where it ultimately leads her) is as important as why and how the male characters in the piece arrive at the misogyny and violence they visit upon her (and where that ultimately leads them).
Above all, it is our intention that in TEETH, we explore how beneath much violence in the world lies an ideological belief that it is necessary. And if there’s one thing the horror genre has taught us, it’s that the most terrifying things are often the ones that can’t be seen
