DOUBLE HELIX
a MUSICAL by
Madeline Myers
In the mid-20th century, the race to find the structure of DNA is on. Double Helix tells the story of Rosalind Franklin, a brilliant scientist who will stop at nothing to make one of the greatest discoveries of all time. But in a race, anything can happen, and hearts and minds are challenged and changed forever.
Title Wave: The New Works Festival is an opportunity for playwrights to work on their play in-person with directors and professional actors. Selected plays will be provided with dramaturgical notes from our artistic leadership, rehearsal time, and a public staged reading in Sag Harbor, New York, followed by an audience talkback, spread over a festive several days.
New Works plays represent a broad array of voices, viewpoints, cultures, and styles. Selected pieces have had re-writes and development already, may now be in their third or fourth draft, and are at a stage where the addition of in-person creatives can be used to their full value.
New Works plays are stories we haven’t heard, make us feel joy and humanity, and take us on new journeys.
Madeline Myers is a composer and lyricist for musical theater in New York City. Her musicals include Double Helix, Flatbush Avenue, The Devil’s Apprentice (World Premiere Copenhagen, Denmark, 2018), Masterpiece (O’Neill Musical Theater Conference 2018 Semi-Finalist), The Starry Messenger, and The Rumoured Lyfe And Certain Death Of Delia Bacon.
Named to the Broadway Women’s Fund 2022 “Women to Watch on Broadway” list, Madeline is a 2022 Kleban Prize finalist for lyric writing, a winner of the 2021 Billie Burke Ziegfeld Award presented by New York Stage & Film and the Ziegfeld Club, a 2020, 2019, 2018, and 2017 Jonathan Larson Grant finalist, 2019 York Theatre Company NEO Writer, a 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018, and 2017 ASCAP Plus Award recipient, and a 2016-2017 Dramatists Guild Fellow. Madeline is a UNC-Greensboro commissioned writer for their 2021 virtual season.
Madeline’s musicals have been developed at the York Theatre, Goodspeed Musicals (Johnny Mercer Writers Grove), the New Dramatists Composer-Librettist Studio, the Fingerlakes Musical Theater Festival, Musical Theater Factory, the NMI Disney Imagineering New Voices Project, the New York Theatre Barn, and the Johnny Mercer Songwriting Project.
When not writing musicals, Madeline enjoys reading, walking in Central Park, and volunteering. She is an active volunteer with Central Synagogue’s unhoused breakfast program and the founder of a 2020 voter registration/Census count initiative for the New York unhoused community. In 2018, Madeline created the Blair School of Music Student Citizen Award given to a female student demonstrating excellence in personal character and contributions to the community. Madeline sits on the Alumni Board of the Vanderbilt University Ingram Scholarship Program, of which she is a proud alumna. She is an original member of the music department of the Broadway production of Hamilton.
Madeline is a member of ASCAP and the Dramatists Guild. She is represented by Chris Till at Verve Talent and Literary Agency. @madelinesmyers
