Breaking Open is a groundbreaking new musical that reimagines the lives of Mary, mother of Jesus, and Mary Magdalene through a deeply human lens. Using Jesus's birth and death as a jumping off point, the show asks controversial and thought-provoking questions, such as: What if Mary was the victim of sexual violence? What if Mary Magdalene and Jesus’s relationship was both spiritual and physical? And what breaks open when we allow women to become the center of these stories?
Blending musical theatre, ritual, and immersive storytelling, the show explores embodiment, devotion, grief, sexuality, power, and spiritual revelation through the interior lives of two women whose stories have been shaped for centuries by patriarchal theology and archetype.
Breaking Open takes us on a provocative, psychedelic journey to the heart of the human experience, in all its rupture and rapture, and invites audiences to be awakened into a new perspective.
about
the creators
REBECCA FISHMAN
Rebecca is a songwriter, vocalist, actor, and emerging musical theater writer whose work explores transformation through grief, embodiment, intimacy, and spiritual inquiry. Her songs often arise from periods of personal rupture and seek to transmute lived experience into emotional clarity, connection, and meaning.
Breaking Open is her first musical and first full-length script, for which she serves as librettist, lyricist, and co-composer. She previously co-created and performed in Rumours, a narrative-driven concert work inspired by the story and music of Fleetwood Mac that was presented in a series of sold-out performances at Largo in Los Angeles.
Drawing from a background in performance, education, collaborative art-making, and independent music, her writing centers the interior lives of women and examines the ways suffering, devotion, desire, and revelation shape human identity. Her work is grounded in emotional honesty, lyrical vulnerability, and a deep trust in the transformative power of storytelling and song.
EVAN PREMO
Evan Premo is a composer, double bassist, sound artist, and interdisciplinary theater maker whose work explores the intersection of consciousness, spirituality, healing, and artistic expression. As co-creator and co-composer of Breaking Open, he brings together musical theater, ritual, improvisation, chamber music, and immersive listening experiences that invite audiences into emotional and spiritual transformation.
His work often explores themes of ancestry, revelation, grief, devotion, and human connection through sound. Previous theater works include The Diaries of Adam and Eve (after Mark Twain) and Queen Marinette, an ongoing Indigenous and non-Indigenous collaborative music theater project produced by Hogfish. His compositions have been commissioned and performed by ensembles including Aizuri Quartet and the Pittsburgh Symphony Chamber Orchestra, and his performance work has been featured at Carnegie Hall and on NPR Performance Today. He is the Artistic Director of Northwoods Music Collaborative and founder of the genre-bending Beethoven and Banjos festival.