EDMONIA the musical
The creative team developing this work is multi-generational, multiracial, and queer, reflecting the dynamism of the show’s characters. Our varied experiences as artists working across media, genres, and decades shape our collective approach to this work. Like Edmonia and Emma, we have struggled against societal forces to claim the space, freedom, and authentic human connection that enable us to make art and flourish creatively.
Miranda Ferriss Jones
Composer
Miranda Ferriss-Jones is a Vermont-born songwriter, theatrical storyteller, performer, and creativity/vocal coach whose work explores feminine identity and challenges societal binaries. A biracial and bisexual artist and mother of two, her lived experience moving between worlds drives stories that resist fixed categories and celebrate in-between spaces. Her career has been notably self-directed, shaped by pluck, hustle, and the cultivation of individual donors and long-term creative partners, allowing her to develop ambitious new work outside traditional institutional pipelines.
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Miranda is committed to building diverse, majority-women ensembles and creative collectives that approach art as a tool for change and activism as both process and purpose. Her projects center collaborative, multi-generational spaces that are safe, rigorous, and expressive, and are frequently activated through fundraising performances, mentorship-driven processes, and audience-engaged experiences.
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Her works in development include The Precipice, a dark feminist fairytale supported by Bob Weir, Z Space, Black Women’s Blueprint, the Wattis Foundation, the REX Foundation, and Williamstown Theatre Festival; Spiral Bound, a queer song cycle recently expanded theatrically as part of her Lincoln Center Presents series and now entering development with PACE University for an April production; Edmonia, which focuses on the lives of 19th-century sculptors Edmonia Lewis and Emma Stebbins, is a NAMT finalist and recently received funding for a series of demos featuring Jenn Colella and Laura Benanti; and Showing Up, a two-woman musical workshopping at Luna Stage in 2026.
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Over the next two years, Miranda will present each of her projects as part of an ongoing partnership with Lincoln Center Presents.
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Rich Edelman
Co - Librettist / Lyricist
Richard Edelman, sculptor, poet, lyricist and writer delved into the story of EDMONIA, the musical because of his burning interest in Edmonia Lewis, Emma Stebbins and the other sculptors of Charlotte Cushman’s Salon in Rome who placed their art and lives into the struggle for human liberation.
Edelman grew up along the Mississippi in Davenport, Iowa and Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He is a graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Engineering and Philosophy, where he was a leader in the anti war movement. Edelman’s poetry publications include TEN FINGER IMAGE by Barlenmir House and THE WEDDING FEAST by Oyez Press. Both volumes have introductions by Denise Levertov, for whom Edelman worked as personal secretary for five years. Edelman founded the leading antiwar underground press and poetry publisher, Hovey Street Press in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The famed Boston civil rights lawyer William P. Homans defended Edelman at trial; Allen Ginsberg read his poetry in support.
Edelman’s sculptures and sculptural installations are in private and public collections throughout the world. In 2016 his large scale metal installations earned him the Frank L. Weil Award for contributions to Jewish culture in North America. Previous recipients include Elie Wiesel, Isaac Bashevis Singer, Topol, Leonard Bernstein and Jaques Lipchitz.
November Christine
Co - Librettist
November Christine (she/her) holds a degree in Cellular Biology and Molecular Genetics from the University of Maryland, as well as a BM in Musical Theatre from the East Carolina University School of Music.
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November’s early musicals include MIRROR|MIRROR, An Unfair-y Tale and historical hip-hop musical LEGACY (NYMF “Best of Fest” winner). Her recent works include her epistolary play IDA, about the anti-lynching activist Ida B. Wells, and A WOMEN’S SUFFRAGE SPLENDIFEROUS EXTRAVAGANZA, a vaudeville revue created in collaboration with The Pleiades Project. An advocate for queer and BIPOC stories, November is thrilled to bring EDMONIA to life with her stellar creative team.
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November is a BMI Lehman Engel Musical Theatre Workshop Lyricist, 2021 Billie Burke Ziegfeld Award winner, and Broadway Women’s Fund “Woman to Watch.”
Simon Broucke
Music Supervisor
Simon Broucke is a composer/lyricist, orchestrator, and music director based in New York City.
He has worked on several off-broadway and regional productions, including Masquerade (Immersive Phantom of the Opera), A Comedy of Errors (The Public Theater), Last Coffee in Rockville (The Farm), The King's Wife (Playwrights Horizons), and Showing Up (Middlebury Town Hall Theater). His original works have been featured in the Soundbites Festival (2023, 2025), and he has written concert music for a variety of ensembles in New York and Vermont. He has also composed dance music for the Columbia Ballet Collaborative and the Schoen Movement Company. His orchestral arrangements of cinematic music have been performed by pops orchestras in the United States and Europe.
He graduated from Columbia University in 2019 where he received the Charles S. Miller award for excellence of the highest standard in the field of music composition. In 2020 he received the New York Youth Symphony Musical Theatre Songwriting Director’s Award for Commitment and Achievement. He is a member of the advanced BMI Lehman Engel Musical Theatre Workshop.