Sick
a New musical
Music by Jake Chapman
Book and Lyrics by Lisa Mongillo
Sick is a darkly whimsical musical about the night when devious young leukemia patient Amber is surprised with news she is about to be discharged from the hospital after a long inpatient stay. Scared of having to shed her ‘sick kid’ identity in the world outside, she hatches a plan to stay longer in the crappy, linoleum-coated building that's become her home.
Tonally, think One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest meets Matilda.
Our show’s absurdity and dark humor are meant to open doors into pain, grief, and the messier parts of being alive. The hospital becomes a surreal, offbeat world – a living and breathing entity – that reflects the silliness and the strangeness of our own.
Whether you’re a plucky kid coming out of an intense illness or a washed-up actor sharing a cot with feral cats in a hospital basement, everyone gets stuck sometimes. But when you shed your cocoon and fly off to be someone new, you get to take the digested corpse juices of your old self with you. (Because that is how cocoons work.)
Sick is written for a cast of ten actors, with performers 18+ playing younger roles. It is meant to feature actors with disabilities, though disabilities are not the focus of the show or their roles in it.
materials available upon request
the writers
Jake Chapman (music)
Jake is a composer, songwriter, arranger, performer, vibraphonist, marimbist, pianist, and glockenspieler from Los Angeles. His work as a composer for musical theater has been featured at Lincoln Center’s Bruno Walter Auditorium, Signature Theatre, The Duplex, Cornelia Street Cafe, and Manhattan Repertory Theatre. He has experience in a wide variety of musical styles, including jazz, hip hop, R&B, funk, pop, rock, video game music, and classical. Jake creates original music on YouTube and TikTok, where he has more than 1.3M and 600k followers respectively. His 2024 single “an angel will be with you shortly” has over 1 million streams on Spotify. As a performer and musician, he has toured across the world, including extensively in the US, Singapore, and China; performed in venues across NYC and Los Angeles; and collaborates regularly with Grammy Awarding-winning artists. He is an alum of the renowned BMI Lehman Engel Musical Theatre Workshop. He earned his B.A. in music and computer science from Columbia University, graduating magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa, while also studying jazz vibraphone in the Columbia-Juilliard Exchange program.
Lisa Mongillo (lyrics, book)
Lisa is a member of the BMI Lehman Engel Musical Theatre Advanced Workshop, an alumna of William & Mary, and a humor writer for Reductress. Selected credits: lyrics/book for THE RADIUM GIRLS (directed by Tony Award winner Marissa Jaret Winokur, produced by High Octave, NAMT Finalist); script for PARTY PEOPLE (Samuel French Off-Off-Broadway Festival); lyrics for A NEVER-ENDING LINE (Off-Broadway, album released by Broadway Records); lyrics/book for WE ARE THE BENJAMIN HARRISON HIGH SCHOOL HORSE GIRLS (Out of the Box Theatrics’ New Works). Her shows were selected for incubator programs with Western Connecticut State University, Pendragon Theater, The Phoenix Theater, and the Johnny Mercer Foundation. Her work has been performed on stages from LA to Paris – including Joe’s Pub, Feinstein’s/54 Below, and Lincoln Center; produced in various festivals; and showcased in Playbill’s Songwriter Series. She studied comedy at The Second City and The Annoyance, and worked on Comedy Central’s THE PRESIDENT SHOW.