Light In The Tunnel

The Story

“Light in the Tunnel” is a contemporary urban fable about how live performance in New York City’s subway stations stops people in their tracks and “lights the tunnels” with extraordinary moments of humanity in the most ordinary and inhospitable of places.

As “A Chorus Line” humanized Broadway chorus dancers,
“Light in the Tunnel” humanizes street performers.

You know that saying about hoping and waiting for the
"light at the end of the tunnel"? But what if the light is IN
the tunnel not at the END of it?

A light having to do with connection.

NOT the kind of connection
that requires high speed internet, wi-fi, skype,
smart (?) phones, and all those other cool devices.

NOT the kind of connection
that requires friending, liking, following, tweeting and blogging
to/with/for hundreds or even thousands of people online…

NOT the kind of connection
that requires near-constant texting and emailing
to keep up with the ever-growing communication deluge…
while walking, rushing/running, biking, driving,
riding the bus/subway/train, sitting at the dinner table,
…or when you’d rather do something “non-electronic”…
or perhaps just nothing at all.

“Light in the Tunnel” is about another kind of connection.

The kind that happens between people
live and in-person – together in real-time.

The most important job of subway performers,
who literally ply their trade in urban tunnels every day,
is to forge a genuine connection with passers-by.

As the story and plot-line of “A Chorus Line” was created
from the real-life experiences of Broadway chorus dancers…

The story and plot-line of “Light in the Tunnel” is currently
in the process of being created from real-life experiences and stories
of each of our 25 subway performer cast members…

At the helm of this writing process is our script/book writer, Barbara Damashek, one of American theater’s finest playwrights
and a 3-time Tony Award nominee for her musical, “Quilters”
(including Best Book for a Musical)…

Barbara specializes in creating musical theater from the individual stories and oral histories of various “sub-cultures” of people – of which “Quilters” is her best known, created from the stories of real-life North American pioneer women. She has also written musicals based on the homeless population of Louisville, Kentucky and the Jewish immigrant population of Milwaukee, Wisconsin among others.

This June, 2012, Barbara will conduct in-depth primary interviews
with each of our 25 individual subway performer cast members – following a preliminary round of interviews conducted in late 2010 –
and spend time at their underground/subway station performances

We will create our story/plot/outline from complete written transcriptions of all preliminary and primary interviews combined with other research data – at which point the writing of script and score shall begin!

“Light in the Tunnel” is a story of quintessential underdogs –
forged from the experiences of New York City subway performers combined with our own magnifying glass on pop culture
and the rich ages-old history/tradition of global street performance.