Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women
Portland Center Stage (2025)
Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park (2026)

The play is an adaptation of Alcott’s novel, which focuses on the coming of age of four sisters around the time of the U.S. Civil War. Alcott narrates the piece, stepping in and out of the story in the role of Jo. Director Joanie Schultz conceptualized the piece as a trailblazing U.S. American feminist ancestor speaking to us in the present day. Building on this idea, my score blended idioms from 19th century folk and popular genres with contemporary indie rock elements — as if the 19th century protagonists were reaching toward us in our own language. In a sense, the musical moments become a portal between time and place, not unlike spiritual traditions of the African diaspora.

One of the characters, Beth, plays the piano. I anchored the score in this instrument and the actor’s diagetic playing, which was joined by other sonic elements in transitions. The piano created a bridge between the interior and exterior experiences of Beth and her sisters. Beth is written as a quiet, observant, and possibly neurodiverse young woman. I imagined she would listen to the world around her, gather fragments of what she heard, and turn them into her own unique creations. For example, the two main melodic themes of the piece are a phrase from 19th century hymn “What Wondrous Love Is This?” and one that is reminiscent of the Westminster Chimes.

Due to the episodic nature of Alcott’s novel and Gunderson’s adaptation, the play moves at a dizzying pace through years of the characters’ lives. A big piece of the design and movement vocabulary was to keep this momentum going — illustrating the rush of life as the young women move further out into the world. While generally grounded in realism, in moments we tapped into this underlying vitality, which we paint more impressionistically. One example is the near drowning of Amy, where body percussion, movement, and stylized sound and lighting effects express the terror of the moment.

Alcott’s family was active in the Transcendentalist movement and a guiding concept for the production was the dialogue between humans the rest of nature. We especially sought to capture inner wild spirits of the young women as they bump up against and resist being tamped down by societal mores. In this clip, Beth relates herself and her sisters to various birds, recalling the main themes attached to them from earlier in the piece. On the brink of death, she communicates with the birds around her as they sing her into the next world.