The musical stars singer and old time banjo player Sue Massek as Bell County, Kentucky traditional singer and activist songwriter Sarah Ogan Gunning. In February 2015, Warehouse Theatre in Cornelius, North Carolina will present Si’s musical Precious Memories, about the lives of coal mining families in Eastern Kentucky.
Full of humor, sorrow and rage, the show possesses a fierce beauty, stirring the heart and mind. The effect of the lyrics, melodies and performances by Graham and the band transcend mere words and music. Songs like fiery gems are strung together on a powerful storyline. In Heaven, Mother reveals the moving story of her life to a quartet of musicians, a “Heavenly Band of Angels”, as they all linger together in a celestial Irish pub. It’s a look back on the life of Mary Harris Jones, a ferocious Irish-American labor leader and community organizer that workers affectionately called “Mother Jones”. He has struck pure gold with Mother Jones in Heaven. As Artist in Residence, he has had three other musicals produced at MSW, and promises more to come. In its California premiere at Main Stage West, it’s the newest work of American folk artist, composer and activist Si Kahn. Surely leading the pack is the powerful and eloquent one-woman musical event, Mother Jones in Heaven. There have been some really remarkable shows presented in Sonoma County these last few seasons one might almost call it a Renaissance, a Golden Age of local theatre. A review in The Best of San Francisco Bay Area titled “A Triumphant, Dazzling ‘Mother’” reads in part:
district attorney in 1902, had a four-week production at Main Stage West in May 2014, starring Mary Gannon Graham in the title role. Si’s most recent work Mother Jones in Heaven, about the legendary Irish immigrant social justice agitator, termed “the most dangerous woman in America” by a U.S. He has had full productions at the Goodspeed Opera House’s Norma Terris Theatre in East Haddam, Connecticut the National Alliance for Musical Theatre (NAMT) Festival of New Musicals in New York (staged reading) the Berkeley, Milwaukee and Tennessee Repertory Theatres the Tennessee Performing Arts Center (TPAC) in Nashville the Playgroup in Knoxville Piccolo Spoleto Fringe in Charleston, South Carolina Perseverance Theatre in Juneau, Alaska Central Square Theatre in Cambridge, Massachusetts and Main Stage West in Sebastopol, California, where he has been the official Artist in Residence since April, 2011. Si Kahn has spent 40 years as a composer, lyricist and book writer for musical theater.