Music, Lyrics & Book by McKinley

Mechanical engineer by day, Dirty Martini by night, Miss McKinley lives a strange and wonderful life. Learn all about it in Gracie and the Atom, Artists Rep's world premiere of McKinley's autobiographical musical about life, death, faith, physics, and Catholic school.

When Gracie loses her father, she is sent off to Catholic school. While Sister Lidwina preaches physics, Sister Francis dissects the Gospels, Archimedes slides into his tub, Jesus walks on Galilee, and Einstein searches for the theory of everything, Gracie looks to them all to answer her questions. Why is she at Our Lady of Peace High School if she's not Catholic? How can she get a message from her father? Where is the mother she never knew? Her new classmates help her with the details of purgatory, ouija boards, and super hero saints. But nothing in this new territory of protons, prayer, miracles, and mechanics can help Gracie escape gravity or prepare her for what she finds.

Gracie and the Atom is produced by Artists Repertory Theatre as part of Fertile Ground: The City-Wide Festival of New Works presented by the Portland Area Theatre Alliance (PATA).

Read more about Artists Rep's other festival entry, Vitriol & Violets, or the other productions in our 2008/09 season.