‘Wanted’ by Angelica Chéri ’13 Will Make Broadway Debut in 2026
Playwriting alum Angelica Chéri ’13 will bring her first musical to Broadway in 2026. Wanted, which recently ran at New Jersey’s Paper Mill Playhouse under the title Gun & Powder, follows white-passing Mary and Martha Clarke at the turn of the century as they take drastic measures to rescue their mother’s home from sharecropper debt. Chéri, who wrote the book and lyrics for Wanted, is a descendant of the Clarke sisters.
The New York Times’ theatre critic Naveen Kumar called the musical “thrillingly original” in his Critic’s Pick review. “Mary and Martha, who go from toiling in the fields to coolly stealing money made off their ancestors’ backs, aren’t outlaws but vigilantes, exacting justice for the crime of slavery,” Kumar wrote.
The musical is produced by 2019 Prince Fellowship alum Ben Holtzman through his company, P3 Productions. They originated the musical at the Paper Mill Playhouse and continue to bring the show to life with its Broadway run.
The musical will be directed by Obie winner Stevie Walker-Webb, who garnered acclaim including a Tony nomination for his direction of Ain’t No Mo at the Public Theater. As Walker-Webb said to Playbill, Wanted “asks us to strap up, grab the bull by the horns, and ride head on into the unknown possibilities and fears of our shadow selves: the parts of us we are too afraid to admit.”
“Following our run at Paper Mill Playhouse, we believe the show’s story of resilience and perseverance is timelier than ever, and we remain committed to championing this bold, original, and action-packed new musical,” the producers of Wanted, P3 and TRATE Productions, told Playbill.
Some of Chéri’s previous works have also been inspired by legendary events in Black history. Berta, Berta, which premiered at the Contemporary American Theatre Festival, imagines a passionate, fictional origin story for the real prison chain gang song of the same name. Chéri also wrote A Letter to Auntie Rosa, a retelling of Rosa Parks’ story from the perspective of her young niece, Sheila McCauley Keys.
Ben Holtzman is a producer and educator who co-founded P3 Productions. P3 launched when it produced Hal Prince's final musical, How To Dance in Ohio, and has since developed Call Me Izzy, a new Broadway play and vehicle for superstar Jean Smart. Holtzman also co-produced recent hits like the Tony winner Sunset Boulevard and A Strange Loop, which won the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for Drama.
Angelica Chéri is a playwright, lyricist, screenwriter, and poet. Her plays include the “Prophet’s Cycle Trilogy:” The Seeds of Abraham, which was mentored by Lynn Nottage and debuted at the Billie Holiday Theatre; The Sting of White Roses and I Will Not Lie to David. Angelica is one of six playwrights selected for the inaugural Writers' Room at the Geffen Playhouse in Los Angeles. She served as Master Playwright in the Frank Silvera Writer’s Workshop Inaugural 3in3 Playwright Festival, and has written for the Obie-Award-Winning 48 Hours in Harlem Festival. Her TV pilot Derailed was a semi-finalist in both Showtime's Tony Cox Episodic Screenplay Competition and the Episodic Comedy Colony with the 2017 Nantucket Film Festival. She is a proud member of The Dramatists' Guild and the New Play Exchange.