original work
RADIO: A Musical Ghost Story
Lowell, a young woman still reeling from the loss of her brother, encounters a ghost in the showers at her gym. It sings to her in strange static only made comprehensible through her headphones--but is it a beckoning call or a warning? A electro-folk musical horror film.
Produced at UNC Greensboro in 2021; Directed by Erin Ferrel Speer and music directed by Dominick Amendum; Music and lyrics by Murphy Taylor Smith; Screenplay by Emerson Mae Smith
LIsten to the original cast recording HERE
Elektric
A pair of twins, one cisgender, one transgender, are reunited after a decade by a Gods-sent mission: murder their mother to avenge their father. They are dual heirs to the throne of Argos, a small militaristic city-state under the complete control of their mother, Klytemnestra. Elektra, who's dealt with her mother’s violent transphobia for years, is ready to kill. Orestes, returning home in secret from his studies abroad, is not so sure. Argos is crumbling at the end of a years-long war and the streets hum with violence and talk of prophets. Brimming with revolutionary fervor, ELEKTRIC is a radical, trans woman-centered retelling of the Oresteia.
Music and lyrics by Murphy Taylor Smith; Book by Emerson Mae Smith
THE SMITH TWINS ARE TERMINALLY ONLINE!
Are you doomscrolling right now? Have you made a shoddy home for yourself in the sublime discomfort of the twitter feed? Has your past-self been consumed whole by the discourse and left your mind barren?
Enter Emerson Mae and Murphy Taylor Smith ; a pair of twin terminally online trans women and NEO award-winning musical theatre writing team (Elektric, RADIO: A Musical Ghost Story). They've spent the past year beating back the existential dread with a stick, and arrive post-vaccination with a survival guide through the terrors of the social internet, impending climate apocalypse, and willful cisgender ignorance.
WHO PUT BELLA IN THE WYCH ELM?
A one-act horror drama set in the year 2042 on the banks of Lake Superior in Michigan’s upper peninsula. Harper, an AFAB nonbinary person, has invited their childhood best friend Olive and her recent girlfriend Gray to the campsite they used to return to every summer. The site, which held special significance to Harper and their family, is now dilapidated and abandoned due to the increasing frequency of drought, wildfires, and food scarcity due to the ongoing climate crisis. Over the course of a single night, the three young queer people wrestle with each other and their future in an increasingly desolate and violent world.
WHO PUT BELLA IN THE WYCH ELM? had its world premiere at Basement Arts at the University of Michiagn in 2022.
WATCHDOG
WATCHDOG is a one woman exploration of transgender female identity and politics in 2019. Through four scenes, personal boundaries are tested and characters are left changed and unsettled.
Written and conceived by Emerson Mae Smith at the University of Michigan