“Atalanta” Preview: The New Newsroom Musical

“Atalanta,” an original musical written by Mira-Rose J. Kingsbury Lee ’24, will run at the Loeb Experimental Theatre from April 6 to April 9. Co-directed by Kingsbury Lee and Ellie M. Powell ’25, the story follows Sarina Lemonde (Grace H. Allen ’24), a young newspaper editor working in a male-dominated newsroom in New York City in 1969. She finds herself in a difficult position when she unexpectedly becomes President of the “Atalanta Post.”

“Atalanta” opens with a busy newsroom scene filled with peppy music. Men clad in plaid pants and women in jewel tones fill the scene: “Who’s who in the news?” they ask. Costume designer Stephanie S. Brecq ’24 dove into the Pinterest world of 1960s fashion to outfit the cast. She describes Sarina’s mother Miriam Lamonde’s outfits as “super high fashion, European but she’s like kind of fake so it’s brought to the nth degree.”

While this may be the musical’s debut, Kingsbury Lee has been thinking about Sarina Lemonde for a decade. She began developing Sarina’s story in middle school. In this first iteration, though, Sarina wasn’t in a New York newsroom, but a futuristic Greco-Roman world. The title does, after all, pay homage to the Ancient Greek heroine Atalanta.

But Kingsbury Lee kept “searching for a place for” Sarina. That’s when she read the autobiography of Katharine Graham, the former publisher of “The “Washington Post” and felt “enchanted” by Graham’s story.

“She’s a really peculiar character,” Kingsbury Lee said of Graham. But Graham’s story embodied the growth that occurred in Kingsbury Lee’s own main character, Sarina. Thus, Sarina was born into the newsroom.

As a musical, “Atalanta” went through several stages of development — from a workshop at Kingsbury Lee’s high school to an online performance during the Covid-19 quarantine — to reach the state it is in today.

The production of the musical at the Loeb Ex aims to present a variety of complex characters and a myriad of relationship dynamics. Viewers will watch as Sarina navigates feelings towards her mother, the bombshell French movie star Miriam Lamonde (Onovughakpor M. Otitigbe-Dangerfield ’25) as well as her husband, Charlie Saltman (Matthew J. Given ’25).

Cast member Louis A. Zekowski ’23, who plays the “emotionally volatile” newspaper editor Jack Harding, described “Atalanta” as “something unlike anything I had ever seen before.”

Propelled by a lean cast of nine, the music features rhymes and spoken songs reminiscent of Harold Hill in “The Music Man” or rap segments in “Hamilton,” as well as jazzy, upbeat tunes with violin, drums, piano, and saxophone. Vocal music director Henry H. Wu ’25 described the variety of music as including songs that are “lighthearted” and songs that have “more emotional punch.”

“So much of the music for this is going to be exhilarating and new and something that audiences aren't expecting,” said Zekowski.

Wu says he hopes viewers will be reminded of “joy” and “the peak of human emotion” when listening to the music in “Atalanta.”

The lyrics make biblical, classical, and historical allusions. Despite, or perhaps because of, its ties to history, the musical addresses issues prevalent in today’s world from the vantage point of 1969.

Kingsbury Lee said she hopes “Atalanta” will bring audiences to recognize that “you really are what you make of yourself,” and that a person’s background does not have to define their future.

—Staff writer Sophia N. Downs can be reached at sophia.downs@thecrimson.com.