Unfolding

We are excited to bring Emma Vieceli‘s brand new musical Unfolding to Edmonton, for its North American premiere. The musical will be presented in concert.

Act One

Rosetta is turning forty. Living in the shadow of her father’s suicide, she lives a braver life through her letters with Mark: American pen pal, mutual-confidant and one of her oldest friends; though they’ve never met. Now, Mark’s letters have suddenly stopped, forcing Rose to question what a lifetime shared only on paper amounts to.

When best friend, Florence, announces she and her fiancée plan to marry in New York, she urges Rose to send one last letter to the absent Mark, telling him that she’s heading to the USA. Though a reply does arrive, hope turns to despair when it’s revealed to be from Mark’s wife, who shares the devastating news that Mark took his own life.

Processing a loss that resurfaces unresolved trauma, and unsure how to even mourn what she never really had, a long-needed confrontation with her own emotions drives Rose to overcome her fears, board the plane, and head to NYC with her friends.

Act Two

The adventure takes a surprising turn in New York City when the group find themselves face to face with a fragile (but very much alive) Mark. It’s not the meeting either pen pal ever imagined, and the mystery deepens when Mark’s daughter, Tessa, appeals to Rose to help her dad, who’s become a shadow of the man Rose thought she knew.

Unable to ignore the echoes of her teenaged self in Tessa, or the regrets she’s harboured for decades, Rose finds the courage to ask questions of Mark that she was never able to ask her own father. Mark finally admits the abuse he endured in his marriage, the depression hidden for years from the world and from his daughter, even from his letters.

At Florence’s wedding, Mark tells Rose that she may well have saved his life, and these powerful words close a wound in her. After the wedding, a stronger and more hopeful Rose boards a plane back to England and the life that she now intends to reclaim. She and Mark vow to continue their letters and lay foundations for futures they can now both dare to see.