Nicole Jefferson Asher

Down deep in the Mississippi Delta, Trap music meets film noir in this kaleidoscopic story of a little-strip-club-that-could and the big characters who come through its doors—the hopeful, the lost, the broken, the ballers, the beautiful, and the damned.

A revelatory reframing of American leadership through the lens of the First Ladies. Exploring everything from their journeys to Washington, family life, and world-changing political contributions, the impact of the White House's women is no longer hidden from view.

An African American washerwoman rises from poverty to build a beauty empire and become the first female self-made millionaire.

A young woman dreams of making it big in the world of hip hop, but her parents demand that she finish her university degree. She dutifully agrees to complete her education, but her spoken word proves to have a powerful impact in the classroom.

Our male narrator, Georges, reminisces about his first sexual encounters with the enchanting Simone. As the encounters become increasingly transgressive, the two characters struggle for power and dominance. The tables are turned; the story is then retold from Simone's very different POV to a horrific climax. 'Story of the Eye' is a scathing critique of the tendency, in both Hollywood and literature, to trivialize female sexuality and power. Simone and Georges battle over the metaphorical 'eye' but the real tension exists in the struggle over who gets to tell the story and ultimately, which story gets told. The hyper-reality of opera as a musical/theatrical device further exaggerates this dichotomy.