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Death and Lucky is a full length musical, inspired by an old Chinese nursery rhyme about two racing tigers. 

Upon hearing the news of her father Jack’s passing, Angela Li has put her life on pause and returned home to the town of Fresh Hills, NJ to help settle Jack’s affairs- to the house where she grew up, to her domineering, overseas born Chinese mother Marian, to her adult younger brother Lucky, an Autistic musical savant who, despite her mother’s prideful denial, requires twenty four hour care.

Within a day of her arrival, Angela discovers that a small, 4 acre plot of land was left to her father in the will of Leon Owings II, a Howard Hughesian landowner and business mogul who himself died the same week. In a PR stunt for the ages Baseball Cap, the Owings’ groundskeeper, is instructed to plant a sign into the ground on that land indicating its new ownership. The mystery surrounding how these two men knew each other notwithstanding, Marian and Angela Li now find themselves in possession of a piece of land to develop and, as with everything else in their relationship, differing views on how it should be handled:

Marian, maintaining that her late husband was a devout Christian and co-founder of the church she currently attends, insists on using the land to build a new sanctuary for the congregation, which rents space from the local JCC.

Angela, insisting that her late father was, more than anything, a pioneer of Asian American civil rights, wishes to erect a memorial library on the land that would celebrate the contributions of American soldiers of Asian extraction during the Vietnam conflict.

Death and Lucky was written in part by a fellowship from the MacDowell Colony and has never been performed.

To hear samples of the show, right click on the song title and select "Save As"

Below is a clip of Jennifer Blood and Sarah Corey performing I Imagined for the concert Timothy Huang: Chinese or Crazy? as part of NYTB at the D-Lounge, in October 2010.  Directed by Marlo Hunter with Mark T. Evans at the piano.