Ohio Production of Ricky Ian Gordon’s Only Heaven to be Telecast

The Muse Machine’s production of Ricky Ian Gordon’s musical Only Heaven, captured on disc and recently released by PS Classics, will soon be seen on television in Ohio and Northern Kentucky. On December 17 at 9pm, ThinkTV 16/WPTD will broadcast a tape of the show, which was originally seen on stage in Dayton, Ohio in February 2002. There will be repeat broadcasts on December 22 at 4pm and December 23 at 11am, and Cincinnati’s WCET/48 will air the program in early 2003.

Only Heaven features nearly 30 poems by Langston Hughes in musical settings by Gordon. The Muse Machine production was directed by Joe Deer; it featured singers Darius de Haas, Jonita Lattimore, Adrienne Danrich, and Jay Pierce, actress Sheila Ramsey, and dancers Michael-Lamont Lytle and Shonna Hickman-Matlock.

The telecast of Only Heaven is yet another component of a program that the arts education outreach organization The Muse Machine began earlier this year when it sent some of the production’s performers and other artists into local classrooms to teach workshops on Hughes’s poetry. Since 1982, The Muse Machine has produced 18 musicals, six revues, and three recordings. ThinkTV is a non-profit educational, informational, and cultural service that reaches 20 percent of Ohio school districts each day with non-commercial, educational programming.

Ricky Ian Gordon’s latest musical, My Life with Albertine, will premiere at New York’s Playwrights Horizons in early 2003. The composer’s other credits include Dream True and States of Independence.