WORKING TITLE: OXY: A CELEBRATION
A musical created by Jean Strong
SETTING: National Pharmaceutical Sales Meeting for PERLO, a multi-billion dollar drug company
CHARACTERS: Ava, the National Sales Director of PERLO, 3 gender fluid backup singers and 1 DJ
SYNOPSIS:
A motivational bacchanal, OXY takes audiences inside the uncanny, highly remunerative, and morally ambiguous world of pharmaceutical sales. The audience will experience the thrill, release, and unease of selling OXY and reaping the rewards in this tragicomedy.
Entering the theatre, audience members will be given a lanyard embossed with their position (rep, regional manager, or district manager) and a playbook that contains the pitches they are expected to deliver when they go out in the world to sell OXY.
The show will follow the arc of an actual national pharmaceutical sales meeting withe call-and-response chants, awards, video clips featuring highest grossing salespeople doing “funny” send-ups of their fellow salespeople, and other feel-good audience participation. The playbook has all the cues for the audience member to fully participate with Ava throughout the show.
As the curtain goes up, AVA leads the festivities with a loud, thumping Tony Robbins-esque grandeur. She is a high-energy visionary trained in Sigma Six and Dale Carnegie, as well as a life coach with an online MBA, and disappointed performing artist. In the months leading up to the meeting, PERLO has shown unprecedented sales of OXY so she is in a celebratory mood.
The audience is a congregation of her Pharma sales reps. She tells the story of how OXY came onto market, how it was marketed, and how it was and continues to be such a success. Her mood follows the story of her ups and downs. The backup singers act as the American public Greek chorus.
Through the power of song, the audience will not be taught anything but will be come out high from the exhilaration and shocked by the truth of how the unleashing of an addictive drug destroyed hundreds of thousands of lives and how after it was nationally known it was killing people no one stopped it.
AVA’s character will transform throughout the musical to give insight into what kind of personality, spirit and philosophy can profit off of the opioid market and rejoice about it.
PHASE ONE:
Note; I will use research (books, articles and documentaries) and interviews to create a story that is influenced by Purdue and the Sackler family’s successful and tragic history selling OXY in the US without infringing on any real journalism, book, scientific studies or corporate source materials. I will conduct interviews with Pharma sales reps, Pharma executives for more background. If I want to pull from any existing material, I will reach out and get approval and will credit any and all sources.
PHASE TWO:
After the CREATOR/PRODUCER shapes the full length rough draft script
The DIRECTOR,CREATOR/PRODUCER and ACTOR will meet in a series of rehearsals to tryout the work. There will also be a series of musical rehearsal to test out different songs with backup singers.
ABOUT THE CREATOR
Jean Strong has a background in writing music and plays for theater and has produced independent film and Off-Broadway theater. She has spent the last 5 years in pharmaceutical advertising as a digital experience expert and brings a deep understanding of the that world to the story.
Jean attended university on a Maryland Distinguished Scholar in the Arts: Music scholarship, a matching scholarship from the University of Maryland and the Dawn B. Sisas Award for Creative Writing.
One of her musicals, “JOHN WALKER: THE MUSICAL” was featured on CNN, The NY Post and was reviewed in the NY Times, and EL PAIS.
"A bold, moving score." - NEW YORK THEATRE REVIEWS
“Spirited musical offerings lend this show it’s charisma - NY TIMES
“Your political anxieties will melt away and you will feel a subversive glee." - NCAC (National Coalition Against Censorship)WORKING TITLE: OXY: A CELEBRATION
A musical created by Jean Strong
SETTING: National Pharmaceutical Sales Meeting for PERLO, a multi-billion dollar drug company
CHARACTERS: Ava, the National Sales Director of PERLO, 3 gender fluid backup singers and 1 DJ
SYNOPSIS: