COMMITTED: THE MUSICAL | Thursday, August 13-Sunday, August 30, various times | The Fruit, Durham
Many of the darkly comedic songs from COMMITTED: The Musical began as a way for Carly Campbell, a Durham songwriter and occupational therapist, to cope with the experience of being a patient at a psychiatric facility—an experience she found dehumanizing and infantilizing.
The musical began to take a more permanent shape in 2016 with the help of playwriting classes Campbell took at Raleigh Little Theater —and also through the encouragement of a local creative community. When musician Aden Darity heard Campbell’s songs in 2023 he phoned director Caitlyn Wells and urged her to join the creative team.
The musical has evolved over the years—it went through a few rounds of workshops and interactive listening sessions and was staged at Meredith College in 2024, in a student production directed by Lormarev Jones. This month, it makes its Durham—and in a way, official—premiere, with a two week-run at The Fruit, with performances from August 13-30; an August 29 performance will also include ASL interpreters.
Inspired by a love of classic musicals like Les Misérables but also taking cues from current day shows like Fun Home and A Strange Loop, COMMITTED tells the semi-autobiographical story of Phoebe, a barista in her mid-twenties who experiences a breakdown, is institutionalized, and comes out the other side with questions about psychiatric care and how to relocate one’s voice and community after trauma.
The subject matter is weighty, but Campbell’s creation is also a joyful celebration of community, featuring a sexy singing bed and a one-eyed talking cat with a punk rock haircut. Ahead of its premiere, the INDY spoke with Campbell about the “wacky-, heart-led, and exciting” musical. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
INDY: When did you know that COMMITTED: The Musical had to be a musical rather than a play or even a memoir or novel? Did you experiment with other ways to tell this story?
CAMPBELL: One of the ways we connected, as patients at the psychiatric facility where I was a patient—an environment that did not foster connection—was by singing pop songs at each other, a capella, while in line for meds. It was like a constant flash mob that could pop off at any moment- rare moments of light and joy in a place full of hard times.
Shortly after arriving home, in the midst of a depressive episode, I wrote this song called “Come Back to Bed” which is a jazzy song of seduction sung by… a bed. That was the moment I knew it was a musical—I needed a human who was a bed, who could sing a low alto part (which my roommate at my collective house in Durham at the time [movement director] Leah Wilks sang, and she will reprise this role this August.) Musical theater songwriting was a vehicle for me to use humor to process my traumatic experiences navigating the mental health system and my own brain.
It’s how I made meaning out of my experiences—sitting down at the piano and playing around with snappy lyrics to get the shame out of my system. Each song added to this big vision- an ensemble dancing and singing harmonies, objects coming to life, flashy scene transitions, each song demanding a different genre. It was always a musical; it was just the way it was coming out of me.
You shaped every part of this—from composing the music, to writing the accompanying lyrics and the script. From a creative process standpoint, how did you bring these three components together to create a cohesive whole?
The only way I have been able to bring the components together into a cohesive whole is through collaboration, specifically through a multi-year workshop and feedback process. I am incredibly lucky to be surrounded by a network of big-hearted, smart, and wild collaborators who have helped me shape the show. As someone who is a songwriter first, I needed a lot of support to make a story structure, figure out how to write dialogue that sounds like the way people actually talk and understand how one beat leads to another.
There are too many people to name, but Aden Darity was the first to offer me structural feedback, and [director] Caitlin Wells has led the devising workshop process and been instrumental in shaping the script. [Music director] Keith Lewis has also been an important collaborator of the last 7 years as my orchestrator—I bring him my chord structure, melodies and harmonies and he turns them into cohesive songs with different instrumental parts and nods to genre with my input every step of the way.
So I have to be grounded in my own vision and story and be able to communicate them, but also be willing to take feedback and be shaped. And so does everyone else. That’s when the cohesion happens, and it is hard-won!
COMMITTED: The Musical takes place in early 2000s in in Bulltown, an imaginary city that’s a stand-in for Durham, and the creative team includes many artists with ties to the city. How has Durham inspired your own creativity, and how has the local community impacted the creation of this musical?
I love Durham. I love sitting on a porch and talking shit. I love the river. I love the threads of queer history and strong LGBTQ community presence. I love that it’s a place of social movements. I love running into people I know everywhere I go—even that person who is avoiding me because maybe we got in a fight at a meeting a decade ago and I forgot what the argument was even about.
It’s also a complicated place, and I’ve seen it change so much in the 15 years that I’ve lived here. I’m evoking an earlier era of the activist and artistic communities I have been part of in Durham. So many musicals and movies are set in New York, and I’m over it! I wanted to ground my show in the life of a queer 25-year-old living in North Carolina in a falling-apart house with her friends who are navigating their own problems.
So many musicals and movies are set in New York, and I’m over it!
I wanted to ground my show in the life of a queer 25-year-old living in North Carolina in a falling-apart house with her friends who are navigating their own problems.”
Queer and neurodivergent people in the South are literally everywhere and we are largely invisible in the media. I want to honor and celebrate that with this show, while also holding the imperfections and contradictions. And I have found a whole community of humans in Durham who are weaving their talents together to bring this show to fruition on a shoestring budget. The set is made from my community’s belongings and trash. We’re doing childcare for some rehearsals. We’re looking out for each other, which is the Durham I want to live in.
COMMITTED: The Musical has been staged and workshopped over the past few years, including at Meredith College and the Pinhook. What surprised you most as the musical evolved and solidified into what audiences will see this month?
It’s really fun to see what sticks around and what has changed. Community members who have seen earlier iterations of this show, whether at Meredith or as part of the workshop sharings, are in for so many treats and new surprises, as well as new approaches to songs that have been around for a decade. For me, the most striking thing is always that so many people relate deeply to my inner workings.
When I got out of the mental hospital, I really internalized this idea that I was especially crazy and maladjusted. But the more I share my story through this show and the closer I get to communicating my truth, the more people say, “me too.”.That is a profound experience of letting go of shame and stigma, and feeling connected to other people about areas of my life in which I have felt profoundly disconnected. The way the show has changed the way I look at myself and others is the most powerful outcome of the process.
What kind of conversations do you hope COMMITTED: The Musical inspires?
I love when people tell me that after seeing the show they had a conversation with their [parents] about mental health. I think the show is already successful in sparking those kinds of conversations, because I get that feedback every time we complete a workshop performance or staging.
I hope there are conversations about mutual aid and how we can show up for one another. I hope there are conversations about the state of the mental health system, and some visioning about what we actually need (and deserve) from emergency mental health care. I hope there is more understanding about living with bipolar disorder, and more mental health literacy about recognizing manic and depressive episodes.
I also hope this production sparks conversation about building infrastructure to support original theater in Durham. I would love for this show to make space for the next person with a story to tell to dream big and make a big-ass show happen. Because it’s rough out there, and we need art in the places we live, for and about us.
To comment on this story, email [email protected].
