‘Verses & Voices’- 54 Below Nutures Emerging Musical Theater Writers- Part I

By Alix Cohen

“We were looking for artists who bring something new to the table, not just the songs.” (Alexa Spiegel) Broadway’s Supper Club, 54 Below, is vested in helping artists. Many musicals have had early exposure at the venue. Even before the organization transitioned to not-for-profit, it sponsored The Genesis Project, offering mentorship and opportunity to budding composers and lyricists last year, then New Writers at 54! January through March of 2025.

Development director Kathleen Germann followed involvement with that initiative by reaching out to Live Music Society. She secured a generous grant. “Our mission is to recognize and protect small venues and listening rooms across the United States so that live music can remain accessible to all,” the society declares. https://www.livemusicsociety.org/ 

The allotment supports Verses & Voices, helmed by Alexa Spiegel, which gives four early career musical theater artists financial aid, advice, and a show booking. The group will meet with artist-in-residence Joe Iconis, also available for counsel. Candidates were selected by 54 staff who are, as Alexa puts it, “plugged into the scene.” Most arrive from clubs rather than professional sources like the BMI and ASCAP workshops. They’re fairly young. All write music and lyrics, some write libretto, some are additionally performers.

Each participant receives a no-strings fee he/she/they will use to produce a single night at the club, paying for arrangements, rehearsals, musicians, and singers.

A pay-what-you-wish ticketing model without table minimum permits audience at every economic level as well as invited theater guests to enjoy original songs and/or selections from musicals in development.

Alexa tells me the club has a hands-off policy unless asked. Each show will arrive at sound check with format and personnel arranged by the writer. Next time, the series hopes to set up an application process. I spoke with the four current artists.

Jenn Grinels – November 18, 2025 at 9:30

Jenn Grinels aspired to be a performer. In high school, she was lead singer and songwriter for a garage band. Theater took over in college. She became a working actor directly after. About fifteen years ago, Jenn joined the ranks of guitar-playing, singer/ songwriters. She plugged into social media, acquired a booking agent, and toured campuses all over the country, some 500 to date. The writer describes her oeuvre as bluesy and soulful. She’s on YouTube.

“I would figure out where I had people whose couches I could stay on, email a local venue, get a Friday gig, and play open mics every night leading up to it- two songs and please come to my show.” Smart.

Jenn “got the call” to create musical theater and hit the ground running. She’s now working on three pieces while rehearsing her 8th! album to be released in the fall, all this with a one year-old baby!

Her musical Wakeman is the true story of Sarah Rosetta Wakeman. Trying to alleviate her family’s financial straits, the 19 year-old left home dressed as a man in 1862. While working as a boatman for the Chenango Canal, she met army recruiters offering a $152 bounty. Sarah enlisted on August 30, 1862, using the name Lyons Wakeman, claiming to be 21 years old.

Over her tenure in the army, the heroine wrote 32 letters home to family on which this show is based. In the 1970s, when women were barred from participation in Civil War Reenactments, some sued. Sarah’s letters were used as proof women fought.
In fact, some 400 females dressed as men masqueraded in service. Several others are woven into Jenn’s plot. Ten songs were commissioned by a theater company that died during COVID. Jenn picked up from there. “I did SO much research.” She even visited Lyons’ grave.

The music is folk/ Appalachian influenced. Wakeman is included in October’s NAMT (National Alliance for Musical Theater) schedule. A song from Wakeman: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3y1fnfJVSKU

Also in that genre, an upcoming piece based on The Girl Without Hands (The Brothers Grimm), in which a miller’s daughter outsmarts the devil, is set in Appalachia. It will be presented at NYU Steinhardt in 2026. A third show in progress- commissioned- adapts Elizabeth Cody Kimmel’s children’s book, Lily B. On the Brink of Cool.

Jenn is upfront about writing “mainstream,” for a popular market… “like Cole Porter and George Gershwin.” She wants her songs to be performed outside theater format.

Ellen Winter – November 21, 2025 at 9:30

“Ellen Winter is a gender expansive Brooklyn-based composer whose music may have been the soundtrack of your favorite 2020 TikTok trend.” (Playbill Songwriter Series) Another artist who began as a performer, they switched tracks to study piano, jazz, and 20th century composition at Sara Lawrence and Duke Ellington School of the Arts. By day they were a student, at night, member of a punk rock band.

Their first musical “not counting the one I wrote at 12” was Let Me Lie Here, an adaptation of and then sequel to an eclectic Greek myth. Act I: Princess Alcestis volunteered to die in place of her errant husband, Admetus, who was then subsumed by guilt. Later, Heracles unexpectedly brought her back from the Underworld.

Act II, the sequel, examines “the consequences of that kind of martyrdom and fighting death. It’s from her perspective….very dark…there are zombies! I was goin’ through it at 22.” Music is electronic rock. Ellen wrote book, music and lyrics discovering they’d rather stick to the last two.

Internship at Ars Nova, a tour with their band, work as associate MD arranger, and supervisor followed. Their first crowd-funded album, Every Feeling I’ve Ever Felt, garnered $12,000. Ellen has fans.

In 2017, exploring articulation of musical ideas, Thirty-Six Questions emerged a two-handed podcast (later an album) starring Jonathan Groff and Jesse Shelton. “We didn’t think there was any way he’d do it,” they tell me referring to Groff. At the time, he was acting in a television crime series. A bond was established. The second album, Yikes!- (a self-described break-up album), was developed during a life changing fellowship in situ at SPACE with the aid of Ryder Farm’s Bryan Grace Posthumous Productions Fellowship, no longer in existence. Both works are collections of songs.

It was Groff who suggested the idea for their current musical project, Animal Magnetism, a story of Franz Mesmer (1734-1815) and his effect on Paris just prior to Revolution. The physician was best known for developing a supposed invisible force that could influence health and behavior. Ellen and co-writers Kelly Tieger and Chris Littler infer the doctor might’ve had some part in provoking insurrection while working with the poor. “When the oppressed are connected to what feels good, they feel clarity on what doesn’t.”

Mesmer was a powerful draw to the female sex. Dramatic treatments often involved trances and group rituals with iron rods, magnetic tubs, and eerie music. “I’m queer and imagining séances with all these women…what if he wasn’t straight, but rather a friend to them?” the writer asks rhetorically.

They unearthed a possible relationship between Mesmer and Benjamin Franklin’s grandson while the statesman/scientist was studying Mesmer’s methods in Paris. Animal Magnetism additionally explores consequences of “that kind of star power”. Though eventually discredited, Mesmer’s techniques laid groundwork for modern hypnosis.

“The power in pleasure is kind of an undercurrent in everything I write. What is our relationship with intimacy, either with ourselves or others; where does the power dynamic play a role? All the albums and musicals are one big story.” Ellen teaches: music, voice, early piano, music theory, music production… They’re a teaching artist with New Victory Theater.

Ellen Winter music: https://www.youtube.com/EllenWinterMusic

Tickets for both can be purchased at 54below.org/VersesAndVoices.. Look for Part II