Story/Teller Arts: Teeth with Michael R. Jackson and Anna K. Jacobs

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Wednesday, 7:00 pm EDT February 25, 2026

The Center for Fiction
& Livestreamed

Join us for an evening of conversation and music with Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award winner Michael R. Jackson (A Strange Loop) and acclaimed writer and composer-lyricist Anna K. Jacobs—the brilliant minds behind the darkly comedic Off-Broadway sensation, Teeth.

Based on the cult-classic film, Teeth follows Dawn O’Keefe, an Evangelical teen whose secret rows of protective vaginal teeth lead to a bloody reckoning with the misogyny and repression at the core of purity culture. After its sold-out 2024 premiere at Playwrights Horizons, the production moved to New World Stages, cementing its status as a breakout hit that masterfully blends satire and social critique, with an irresistibly catchy score.

Stacy E. Wolf, Professor of Theater at Princeton University and one of America’s foremost scholars on feminist musical theater, will moderate a discussion with Jackson and Jacobs about the making of Teeth and the power of musical theater to challenge, provoke, and entertain. The evening will also feature live performances from the show with the original Off-Broadway cast, including Alyse Alan Louis (English Teacher, Hulu). An audience Q&A will follow.

We offer two in-person ticket options: the $10 Standard Ticket and the $40+ Supporter Ticket. Both provide the same access, but if you’re able, we kindly suggest registering for the Supporter Ticket to help sustain our programs.

Presented in partnership with Theatre Communications Group.

Featuring

Michael R. Jackson

Michael R. Jackson

Michael R. Jackson was one of Time magazine’s 100 most influential people of 2022. His Pulitzer Prize- and New York Drama Critics’ Circle-winning A Strange Loop (which had its 2019 world premiere at Playwrights Horizons in association with Page 73 Productions) received 11 Tony Award nominations in 2022, and was called “a full-on laparoscopy of the heart, soul, and loins” as well as a “gutsy, jubilantly anguished musical with infectious melodies” by Ben Brantley for the New York Times. In addition to A Strange Loop, he also wrote book, music, and lyrics for White Girl in Danger, and the book and lyrics for Teeth, which opened at New World Stages in Fall 2024. Awards and associations include: a New Professional Theatre Festival Award, a Jonathan Larson Grant, a Lincoln Center Emerging Artist Award, an ASCAP Foundation Harold Adamson Lyric Award, a Whiting Award, the Helen Merrill Award for Playwriting, an Outer Critics Circle Award, a Drama Desk Award, an Obie Award, a Fred Ebb Award, a Windham-Campbell Prize, a Dramatist Guild Fellowship, and he is an alum of Page 73’s Interstate 73 Writers Group.

Photo Credit: Beowulf Sheehan
Anna K. Jacobs

Anna K. Jacobs

Anna K. Jacobs is a Jonathan Larson and Billie Burke Ziegfeld Award–winning composer, lyricist, and book writer. In collaboration with Michael R. Jackson, she wrote the music and co-wrote the book for the Drama Desk Award and Lucille Lortel-nominated musical Teeth, which Vulture hailed as a “bloody, bawdy musical with banging songs.” It ran off-Broadway at Playwrights Horizons and New World Stages, and an original cast recording has been released on Yellow Sound Label. Anna’s stage adaptation of Moana is in residence at the Walt Disney Theatre onboard the Disney Treasure. Her other musicals include POP! (Yale Rep, Pittsburgh City Theatre, Studio Theatre; CT Critics Circle Award, Best Production of a Musical), Anytown (George Street Playhouse), Harmony, Kansas (Diversionary Theatre; Craig Noel Award nomination, Outstanding New Musical and Outstanding New Score), and Witnesses (California Center for the Arts; Craig Noel Award, Outstanding New Musical). In collaboration with playwright Anna Ziegler, she is also writing A House Without Windows, a musical about the life and disappearance of child prodigy author, Barbara Newhall Follett. Anna has taught musical theatre writing to students at Princeton, the New School, the New York Youth Symphony, and for the Johnny Mercer Foundation, and received her MFA in Musical Theatre Writing from NYU-Tisch. Originally from Sydney, Australia, she has called Brooklyn home since 2006.

Photo Credit: Luke Redmond
Sean Doherty

Sean Doherty

Sean Doherty is so excited to be here singing Teeth again! Off-Broadway: Teeth (Playwrights Horizons/New World Stages). National Tour: Jagged Little Pill. Regional: Eighty-Sixed (Diversionary Theatre). Special thanks to his family, friends, and most importantly, his boyfriend Ashton for always cooking dinner, walking Chuck, and being the best. Love you. Instagram: @SeanDDoherty. Twitter: @SeanDoherty
Jonathan Linden

Jonathan Linden

Jonathan Linden is a New York-based guitarist who has performed on over 20 Broadway and Off-Broadway shows as both a substitute and principal musician. Recent principal credits include: Teeth (New World Stages), Radio City Christmas Spectacular (Radio City Music Hall), I Can Get It For You Wholesale (CSC), The Beautiful Lady (La Mama), Between The Lines (Second Stage Theater), The Rose Tattoo (American Airlines Theater). He is also a longtime collaborator of celebrated indie band Elizabeth & The Catapult and a songwriter in his own right, with a debut release set for 2026.
Alyse Alan Louis

Alyse Alan Louis

Alyse Alan Louis: Recently: New Mom to Archie (born in October), English Teacher (Brit/Season 2), and Hurricane Diane (Beth/Hartford Stage). She played Dawn in TEETH at New World Stages and Playwrights Horizons (Outer Critics Circle and Lucille Lortel Nominations). Since 2011, she has been a part of the show’s development. Broadway: Amélie, Disaster, Mamma Mia; Off-Broadway: Drama Desk Award Nomination for Soft Power (Hillary/The Public Theater); White Girl In Danger (Second Stage); A New Brain (Encores Off Center); The Civilians’ Pretty Filthy (Abrons); Regional: Pioneer Theatre Company, Denver Center, Barrington Stage Company, Center Theatre Group, The Curran, Bucks County Playhouse, Berkeley Rep, Olney Theatre Center, City Theatre Company, Philadelphia Theatre Company, Prince Music Theatre, Walnut Street Theatre. Original Cast Recordings: TEETH, Soft Power (Grammy Nomination), White Girl in Danger, Pretty Filthy, Amélie, Encores’ A New Brain, The Michael Friedman Collection’s The Abominables.
Patrick Sulken

Patrick Sulken

Patrick Sulken is a New York‐based music director, arranger, and orchestrator who recently served as the Music Director of Teeth and Little Shop of Horrors Off-Broadway. His Broadway credits include Hell’s Kitchen, Death Becomes Her, Mamma Mia, & Juliet, Once Upon a Mattress, Trisha Paytas’ Big Broadway Dream, Pretty Woman, Kinky Boots, Beetlejuice, Mean Girls, Anastasia, Something Rotten!, and Gigi. Particularly focused on the development of new musicals, Patrick has conducted the premiere productions of Ten Brave Seconds (Pioneer Theatre), fuzzy (Barrington Stage), Regency Girls (The Old Globe), Double Helix (Bay Street Theatre), Fly (La Jolla Playhouse), Babe Lincoln (Edinburgh Fringe), We Are the Tigers (Off-Broadway) and For You, Paige (TikTok). His arrangements and orchestrations of Dare to Dream, Jr. and Alice in Wonderland, Jr. for Disney Theatrical have been performed around the world.
Stacy Wolf

Stacy Wolf

Stacy Wolf is Professor of Theater in the Lewis Center for the Arts and of American Studies in the Effron Center for the Study of America at Princeton University. She is the author of A Problem Like Maria: Gender and Sexuality in the American Musical; Changed for Good: A Feminist History of the Broadway Musical; Beyond Broadway: The Pleasure and Promise of Musical Theatre Across America; and co-author of Feminist Approaches in Musical Theatre. Stacy teaches seminars at Princeton on gender and race in musical theatre, including a class on Sondheim’s musicals, and she regularly offers public lectures about musical theatre. She is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Princeton Presidential Teaching Award, and the 2024 Distinguished Scholar Award from the American Society for Theatre Research.

Featured Title

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Teeth

By Michael R. Jackson & Anna K. Jacobs

Published by Theatre Communications Group

PURCHASE

At first glance, life in Eden is idyllic. At the center of town life we find New Testament Village Church, led by Pastor Bill O’Keefe. His beloved teen stepdaughter, Dawn, is the head of the Promise Keeper Girls, a devout group of young women who refuse to succumb to everyday temptations. And while Dawn effortlessly leads the PKGs, she struggles to rein in her own “precious gift”—namely, the two rows of gleaming white teeth perfectly placed to help preserve her chastity. But when Dawn is betrayed by the men she trusts most, her “gift” becomes her saving grace, and she embraces her newfound power like the stuff of legend. Teeth is a toe-tapping, gut-busting musical satire that gets under the skin of patriarchy and picks apart our sex-obsessed and sex-repressed society.