A musical based on the life and career of Grammy Award-winning blues musician Bobby Rush will have its world premiere this fall in Mississippi. Produced by Stephen Lloyd Helper’s Times Sq. Productions, “Slippin’ Through the Cracks: The Bobby Rush Musical” will run from Oct. 20 through Nov. 1 at New Stage Theatre in Jackson.
The production will feature a score by Rush and a book co-written by Rush and Helper. Helper, who was a co-creator of Broadway’s long-running Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller revue “Smokey Joe’s Cafe,” will co-direct the musical with Matthew Johnson Harris.
In addition to “Smokey Joe’s Cafe,” which was a 1995 Tony Award-nominated Best Musical, Helper’s Broadway credits include serving as the directing intern on 1980’s “West Side Story,” as well as the assistant to Jerome Robbins on 1981’s “Fiddler on the Roof” and to Richard Maltby Jr. on “Baby” and “Song and Dance.” Harris, who recently served as associate director of the Tony-winning “Parade” revival, will also choreograph “Slippin’ Through the Cracks.”
The new musical chronicles Rush’s journey from a young boy who was a sharecropper and snuck into juke joints to a young man experiencing the segregated Chicago blues scene alongside figures like Muddy Waters and B.B. King. The 92-year-old Rush is a three-time Grammy winner and a Blues Hall of Fame inductee who recently performed at the Academy Awards in celebration of the hit film “Sinners”; Rush played the harmonica parts for the character Delta Slim in the Ryan Coogler movie.
The premiere production of “Slippin’ Through the Cracks” will coincide with a new documentary about Rush titled “King of the Chitlin’ Circuit,” which is set to debut on Mississippi Public Broadcasting in August before a national PBS broadcast in late November.
Casting and additional creative team members for “Slippin’ Through the Cracks” will be announced.
