by Jordan Toronto

Just in time for Easter, The State Theatre and Singing Onstage will premier the new musical “Praise the Egg!” on Saturday, April 3 at 3pm and 7pm.

The musical, based on Mary Gage’s novel “Praise the Egg” will delight audiences of all ages with an enchanting story about a society of chickens. A musical about chickens?

“Sure!” said Mike Negra, Executive Director of the State Theatre. He got behind the project after the State Theatre’s production of “My Name is Pablo Picasso,” another of Gage’s plays, received a great response.

While “Praise the Egg!” is Gage’s first musical, it seems life in a chicken run has inherent drama and musicality.

“They have a very strong society,” Gage said. “The rooster is quite dominant. He only allows one male in the run. There is definitely no sexual equality! The rooster leads all the choruses. And yet, he’s also very gentlemanly, always stepping back after bringing food to the females.”

The hens have a clear pecking order, according to Gage, a sort of social order for chickens. There are the “high hens,” and it goes down from there. The order is established to determine which chickens get to eat first and which chickens can peck at the ones with lower status.

“Also, as the mother in a chicken run, you wouldn’t be raising your own chicks,” Gage explained. “The broody hen is the one who sits on the eggs, the one who puffs herself up and struts around the run. ‘Granny Broody’ definitely changes her behavior when brooding.”

Gage wrote “Praise the Egg” in Australia, after moving there from England when her two children were young. This particular story came to her after she got a couple of battery hens (or “farm hens,” as Americans would call them) as part of a promotion when she worked for the Festival of Perth. When she brought the pristine hens back to her old chicken run, Gage watched the battery hens experience a world that was totally foreign to them. They had never seen a rooster before or heard his alarming crow.

Gage enjoyed observing the chickens as they grew from baby chicks, under Granny Broody’s care, into the “teenage years.”

“They would run around,” said Gage, “thinking they swing the world at their wrists.”

Gage imagined the hens talking, with the battery hens telling the others that they weren’t hatched by a broody, but by a light. She envisioned the reaction the chickens in the run had, to hearing this crazy story.

“I personalized them,” said Gage. “I didn’t invent them. They sort of told the story themselves. That’s why I like theatre, not to make things up, but to reveal them.”

“One very cool thing about Mary’s story is the character of Prudence, who doesn’t want to stay in the run,” Biever said. “Yet there is no judgment of those who do want to stay. The point is, do what you want to do. I like that the message is to support each others’ choices, unconditionally. Of course, the drama in it is that the characters have to come to that realization.”

“’Praise the Egg!’ is not a kids’ show, and it’s not just about chickens,” said Biever. “It’s an analogy, a parable. It’s about humans. We’ll watch the show and see ourselves.”

Gage now lives in State College, where one of her grown children also lives, while her other child lives in Australia. Gage has adopted her granddaughter, so perhaps, at times, she sees herself as “Granny Broody.”

An award-winning screenwriter, author, and playwright, Gage started her writing career in England as a journalist for The Times, moved on to writing plays and screenplays in Australia, and then landed here in State College, where she taught playwriting, screenwriting and feature journalism at Penn State. She has had four of her plays produced in New York and continues to work as a freelance writer.

When Gage first proposed a musical based on her novel, she didn’t know who would write the music. Negra suggested that she contact Richard Biever, co-owner and artistic director of Singing Onstage Studios, a local musical theatre school and production company, who is graduating from Penn State in May with an MFA in Directing for the Musical Theatre Stage. The process of making the book into a musical was a very smooth one, according to Biever. Their first decision was the addition of the “obligatory” musical theatre exclamation point to the title!

“I asked Mary to write it as a play first,” said Biever, “and then the plan was to go through it together, to figure out where we felt the characters needed to sing. But she made my job easy, in terms of deciding where the songs should go. She had almost all of those moments mapped out in her first draft.”

The fact that “Praise the Egg!” is a locally-grown musical, created and produced entirely by artists in State College, gives Gage a special pride about the town she calls home.

“It’s really a wonderfully unusual scenario here,” Gage said, “to be able to produce your work locally, in a large theatre, for an intelligent audience, without nearly as big a risk as it would take to produce a show at a comparable theatre in a big city.”

Gage is thrilled to be collaborating with some of the most talented people in the area, including director Elaine Meder-Wilgus, who usually serves community theatre in State College as an actor, director, and teacher for The Next Stage, the State College Area School District, and The State Theatre, and choreographer Jill A. Brighton, native of State College and Penn State graduate, who has served on Penn State’s dance faculty and is Director of the Central Pennsylvania Dance Workshop.

The creative team also includes set designer Harriet Rosenberg, Instructor of Art at Penn State, Altoona, who has built a non-traditional set, using paper cut-outs projected on to a backdrop to create a shadow of whatever image the story calls for.

“Rich is making it bigger with his tunes, Harriet is making it magical with her unique set, and Mike Negra is making it possible with his belief in the project and his can-do attitude,” said Gage. “They have all been very ‘can-do’ throughout this process!”

Karen Davis, President of UPC (United Poultry Concerns), a native of the Altoona area, is also travelling to State College to see “Praise the Egg!” Gage and Davis connected after Davis quoted a passage from “Praise the Egg” at the Yale Chicken Conference, a quotation she included in her book, “Prisoned Chickens, Poisoned Eggs.”

Davis’s mission is to promote compassionate and respectful treatment of domestic fowl. Davis will do a book signing at Webster’s Bookstore on S. Allen Street, from 3:30-5:30pm on Friday, April 2.

Gage herself is not an activist for chickens. “I would say I’m a concerned omnivore,” said Gage. “I don’t mind eating meat, but I believe an animal should be brought up humanely, allowed to roam free on a farm, living naturally, so it all goes round and round.”

“Praise the Egg!” is community theatre at its best, a musical written by the community, for the community. Gage’s story will have a new audience, thanks to the tremendous collaboration of everyone involved.