Be Safe I Love You

Book by Darrah Cloud
Music & Lyrics by Stephanie Salzman
Based upon the novel by Cara Hoffman

Sunday, November 8 at 4pm

A new music theater piece, based upon the novel by Cara Hoffman, about a female veteran of the Iraq war, returning home to Watertown, New York. Re-entry is a disaster as Lauren Clay’s PTSD is slowly revealed, and she takes misguided action to protect her family from an enemy only she can see. In the end, she is saved by that family and the people who have always had her back at home, no matter how flawed they are. The story involves class struggle, as well as the struggle of this incredible soldier who is just trying to save everyone from a war she has to keep fighting.

Ancram Center’s Play Lab provides theatre artists of all practices with time, space and resources to develop a new, innovative theater project to be presented in the future at Ancram Center or elsewhere. Selected artists spend a week-long residency in Ancram that culminates with a work-in-progress showing. Throughout the residency, Ancram Center makes efforts to connect the artist with the community in meaningful ways through a combination of interactive workshops, open rehearsals, audience discussions, and more.

DARRAH CLOUD’S most recent play, House of McQueen was recently produced Off-Broadway at Hudson Yards. She is currently working with David Simpatico and Michael Holland on a musical adaptation of Wally Lamb’s She’s Come Undone for Theater Latté Da in Minneapolis. She wrote the lyrics for the musical version of Willy Holtzman’s play, Sabina, which premiered April 2022 at Portland Stage. Her play, Turning, about the 1936 Olympic women’s gymnastic team, was produced at Centenary Stage in March of 2021. She teaches at Southern New Hampshire University and has won numerous awards including an NEA and most recently a NYSCA grant for developing a new musical work, Be Safe I Love You, at Ancram Center for the Arts. She is a graduate of the Writer’s Workshop at the University of Iowa as well as a co-founder of A Howl of Playwrights, a Hudson Valley playwriting development corps.

STEPHANIE SALZMAN is a multiplatinum, native NYC writer for musical theater & recording artists.  She inherited her Yiddish stage writing/performing ancestor’s passion; Grandma’s china, creative spirit; and grew up listening to pop, R&B, opera & her father, Eric Salzman’s avant garde work and his mantra, a Merriam Webster quote–"There is a music for everybody." She teaches at the NYU Graduate Musical Theater Writing Program, and develops recording artists. Commercial song (NY Times, Rolling Stone reviews) publishers: Power Pitch Music/BOK Music. CURRENT PROJECTS: Heavyhead (Jersey City Theater); Be Safe I Love You (NYSCA Grant), Crossing Over (USA Artists, ASCAP/Lied, Cap21), Psychic; Midnight Stage. RECORDINGS/TV/THEATER CREDITS: Whitney Houston; 3LW; Miki Howard (Grammy nominated); Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Woman Alone With Out-Of-State Plates (Dir: Tom O'Horgan); Night Out With the Girls (MAC Nomination); American Music Theater Fest. GRANTS/AWARDS: NYSCA; Hammerstein/Tisch, ASCAP, Meet the Composer. EDUCATION/TRAINING: MFA, NYU Graduate Musical Theater Writing, Advanced BMI Workshop, New Dramatists Composer Librettists Studio , Member of Dramatists Guild, ASCAP.