Sons of Harmony: Katey Sagal and Kurt Sutter Create a New Choral Theater Piece

When the world feels like it’s falling apart, Katey Sagal does what she’s always done: she turns to music. The actor, best known for her roles in Married…with Children and Sons of Anarchy, found herself in a dark place in early 2025, rattled by the LA fires and the political turbulence of the moment. Rather than wait for the feeling to pass, she built something: a choir, assembled in her living room, with no agenda and no end game. Just voices, and songs she loved, and the hope that coming together might be enough to cure what ailed her.

That choir has since evolved into Khorus Harmonia, a hybrid theatrical performance featuring soloists, a multimedia, and prose pieces penned by Sagal’s husband, acclaimed Sons of Anarchy creator Kurt Sutter, with choral arrangements by Steven Argila.

The show, which makes its debut this week at the Hudson Theatre in Los Angeles, traces an emotional arc from despair to resilience, drawing songs from Bon Iver, U2, and more. All proceeds from the run (April 22-May 2) benefit CHIRLA and Wounded Warriors.

We sat down with Sagal ahead of opening night to talk about the origins of the project, what it means to create without a safety net, and what it’s like to once again share a creative space with her husband.

This conversation has been condensed and edited for clarity.

What was going on in your life when this idea first took shape?
Here’s the story. A year ago, March 2025, I was feeling very despondent and pretty upset by the world and what was happening. It was after the fires, there were changes in our government…Not that this is a politically motivated thing at all, but shit was flying, and I was just really bad.

Music has been part of my life since I was a little kid, and it always consoles me, makes me feel better. I usually have a band or something that I go play with, but what I wanted to do was sing with a choir. I love choir singing. I tried to find one, and I couldn’t find one, so I decided to put one together.

How did you find people?
I asked people if they could recommend somebody. It wasn’t really an audition because it was for fun. Within a couple weeks, I had 10 soloists in my living room. I started picking songs; It’s not regular choral music, it’s contemporary music. We do a song called “Things Happen” by a band called Dawes. We do a Bon Iver song, we do a U2 song. We sing a John Hiatt song called “Have a Little Faith in Me.” It’s not your typical choir situation. We were all having such a great time, with no goal in mind, and it started to take on an emotional arc.

What is that throughline?
All of my friends are like, “It has never been this bad.” And I don’t believe that. I believe that we, historically, have been through horrible things and made it through. The arc of the music started to take on this feeling of “Shit happens, but let’s have some hope.” What I think the solution is, is to join in community. To stay together, to not isolate, to not turn away, but to join together and make something beautiful. That’s what started to happen.

At what point did it stop being something just for fun and become something that you wanted to show an audience?
All of a sudden.  But it didn’t feel like it should go into a club, it didn’t feel like it should go into a church. My husband came in and put together this hybrid theatrical thing with a multimedia component, kind of like when you go to a rock concert, and he wrote me these prose pieces that I throw in there. It’s not a play, but it takes us on an emotional journey, and I’m doing exactly what I wanted to do. I leave this hour presentation and I feel uplifted and not so afraid and not alone, and I’m hoping other people [feel that too].

And music definitely has the power to do that.
Oh, it does. I’m not a trained musician but I just know that singing in a choir is very healing. It was really interesting because it was the first time, probably in my whole career, that I had no end game planned. This was purely to be of service. And then we decided to donate the proceeds to CHIRLA [Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights] and to Wounded Warriors, which are two organizations we feel very strongly about.

Tell me about working with Kurt in this capacity, and how it differs from when you’re on a project like Sons of Anarchy together.
I love working with Kurt. Kurt’s a great writer. He’s also comes from the theater. Kurt was going to be a director and he’s got his MFA in theater. So, this is a world he knows better than I do, certainly.

We work well together. We, we found a good rhythm on Sons of Anarchy through some bumps, like [always] when you’re married to the person you’re working with.

The work-life boundary must be tricky when your collaborator is also your husband.
A hundred percent. Thank God we had kids is what I always say. You get home and it’s about them. So, we worked really well together on it and he wrote some beautiful words as he does. It’s worked out beautifully. It’s hard to get people to come out in LA, but it’s a lovely thing I feel good about, and I hope people will take the time to come out.