Strange Faces began as my college thesis at Princeton University. I was inspired by my own experiences as the sibling of a person with Asperger’s syndrome and by the investigative theatre practices of the Civilians, an innovative theatre company in New York City founded by Steve Cosson and Michael Friedman. The show began as a song cycle based primarily on interviews that I turned, as the Civilians do, into monologues and songs. As the piece developed and recurring characters evolved, it morphed into a book musical.

The original production, which I also directed, premiered at Princeton in April 2011. It went better than I could have imagined; we sold out every performance, and the emotional impact was enormous. Autistic and non-autistic people alike told me how the piece resonated with them and that it changed the way they saw the world and their relationships. 

I pursued further professional opportunities for the piece, including a reading in NYC in June 2013, but without a hard deadline and with my music directing career taking more of my time, the rewriting I wanted to do fell by the wayside. In early 2020, I decided to record some demos and officially put the piece to bed. Instead, the pandemic delayed my recording plans, and in the interim, I met Adam Roberts, who told me about TILT and opened the door for an unexpected new life for Strange Faces.

I’m thrilled that Strange Faces has found its way to the neurodiverse artists with whom it belongs. The conversation about autism has grown tremendously since I first wrote the piece — Asperger’s isn’t even an official diagnosis anymore! — and the fact that my work still resonates with these artists is the best result I could imagine. The version you are seeing today is significantly different from the original, with most of the rewriting focusing on empowering the characters and deepening their relationships. Removing the box of Asperger’s created some exciting new opportunities, and perhaps my favorite development of this revision is that the character Jamie is now fully nonverbal. Let this not be the first time a nonverbal autistic character appears in a musical, expressing himself through song in ways he cannot through words, just as musical theatre intends for us to do.

While I hope this won’t be the end of the road for Strange Faces, this production has already far surpassed my dreams for the show. I am so grateful to be part of the TILT family and delighted that you are meeting these characters through the lens of the incredible company on stage today. I hope the piece speaks to you the way it has spoken to many others and that it becomes part of the fabric through which you view the world.

Andrea Grody