DaytonMostMetro has been covering the Bengson’s for a long time as Ghostlight Coffee Owner Shane Anderson reminded me this afternoon after sharing their big news! For those of you who aren’t familiar with Anderson’s theatrical history, he was the co-founder of the Encore Theater Company here in Dayton, and at times a theater writer for DMM. Today he reached out to us to share the fabulous news for Shaun & Abigail Bengson.
Today Playbill shared that the American Theatre Wing has announced the recipients of the 2020 Jonathan Larson Grants, named for the late composer of the Tony- and Pulitzer Prize-winning musical Rent to honor emerging composers, lyricists, and book writers.The Bengsons (Hundred Days; The Lucky Ones; Sundown, Yellow Moon) were one of the four recipients in the Music and Lyrics category. The grant is awarded to musical theatre composers, lyricists, and librettists, or writing teams, early in their career, to support artistic endeavors and safeguard long-term music writing careers.
Each recipient will receive an unrestricted grant of $10,000 as well as additional support in the form of residencies, concerts, and recording grants. The grants will be presented March 23 by the Wing at a private event in New York City that will feature special performances of their work. This year, all four recipients will also receive a $2,500 Saw Island Foundation Recording Grant.
Abigail Bengson and Shaun Bengson. photo by Joseph Marzullo/WENN
For a little history of Shaun and Abigail’s Dayton history check out these previous MostMetro.com stories:
AIN’T THAT GOOD NEWS…? June, 8, 2010
Shaun McClain Bengson was a local boy. Bellbrook. You might’ve even seen him perform as a kid…BHS marching band & theater productions, Sinclair Jazz Combo, community theater groups. In 2001 he began to explore beyond the Miami Valley. First he attended college at Indiana University (studied Ethnomusicology & Traditional Indiana Fiddling), then after graduation Shaun moved to New York City as a part of the city’s teaching fellows program. He became a music teacher in NYC. He was assigned to a school for special education students, in a unit for students with Autism. It was in this unit where Shaun crafted programs such as “Little Kids Rock!” and then “The New Manhattan Music Project,” where his students wrote, produced & performed their own musicals. It was at the performance of these musicals where Shaun found love. In walks Abigail Nessen, out walks “The Bengson’s,” and a new band called the “Zombie Nationalists.” They were engaged within two weeks and writing their first musical.
A Testimony To Our Time Remaining BY
The Bengsons Perform The Proof
The Bengsons CD Release Party w/Walk The Moon
Thursday, January 20 · 8:00pm – 11:30pm
Shane Anderson, the technical director for the Encore Theater Company called me one late afternoon last October saying that I needed to come down to the Oregon District to check out the Bengsons. He said they were a husband and wife musical duo that were rehearsing their latest project, The Proof.
The premise caught me by surprise by its complexity. This was a story about two lovers who, upon finding out that the husband was suffering from a terminal disease, consciously decided to compress the sixty years or so that they once imagined that they together into a single year, which was what reality and circumstance had afforded to them. As they launched into an condensed version of the whole poetic précis, I felt the same loss of adjectives to describe what I was witnessing that Shane had had earlier.
Those of you who attended the June 2010 production of RENT in C{space got a glimpse of Shaun & Abigail. Shaun led the rockin’ band, giving this version of RENT an instrumental style of it’s own. Abigail portrayed “Mimi.” Her Mimi was perhaps a tinge “Joplin-inspired.” She took the dark role & gave it a fierce, hard edge that was probably more truthful to the character than “glam’d” for Broadway.production of RENT in C{space got just a glimpse of Shaun & Abigail. Shaun led the rockin’ band, giving this version of RENT an instrumental style of it’s own. Abigail portrayed “Mimi.” Her Mimi was perhaps a tinge “Joplin-inspired.” She took the dark role & gave it a fierce, hard edge that was probably more truthful to the character than “glam’d” for Broadway.
Botched But Indestructible . BY
…This musical is often considered a one-man show, but has always been a solid two-hander due to the presence of Yitzhak, Hedwig’s obsessive, occasionally bickering husband superbly portrayed with crazed, wide-eyed intensity by the mesmerizing Abigail Nessen Bengson, who took Dayton by storm last season as Mimi in Encore’s production of “Rent.” Yitzhak is primarily a reaction role, but Bengson, while never stealing focus from Parkey or reducing the compatible rapport they establish, commands attention with every dynamic, character-specific move she makes.
