About This Show

Songs from a new musical, performed by book writer/lyricist Kirya Traber, arrangements by composer/lyricist Sissi Liu. If This Be Sin is based on the life of the openly queer Harlem Renaissance entertainer, Gladys Bentley, spanning from Bentley’s formidable ascent to fame and riotous queer resistance in the midst of the racial and sexual revolution in the 1930s, to her tumultuous choice to eventually conform become a ‘good christian wife in the 1950s. Kirya and friends will share a few songs from the show, which will have a workshop production as a part of HI-ARTS Critical Breaks Residency series, in Spring 2020.