Singer-songwriter Olivia Kuper Harris feels quite close to the characters in San Francisco Bay Area Theatre Company’s upcoming world-premiere musical “The Day the Sky Turned Orange.”
“I probably relate most to our lead character, Amari. She’s a young woman, she’s gone through love and loss, and she’s really trying to build a better future for herself as an adult. I think that’s probably where I’m at,” says Harris, who cowrote the R&B score, her first for musical theater, with David Michael Ott, her collaborator on recent albums of original tunes.
Harris, who lives in Los Angeles and is perhaps best known as a recent contestant on NBC’s “The Voice,” adds that her voice and perspective are behind most of the songs in the show, which opens in previews on Sept. 5 at Z Space in San Francisco.
“It’s very much my personal journey. I don’t know any other way to write,” says Harris, adding that the interconnected stories of the four main young adults in “The Day the Sky Turned Orange” are “very relatable and intimate,” though set against a haunting backdrop and based on the real event on Sept. 9, 2020, when Bay Area residents awoke to an eerie orange atmosphere caused by wildfire.
The show, with a book by Julius Ernesto Rea and choreography by Vince Chan, is directed by SFBATCO Artistic Director Rodney Earl Jackson Jr., who calls it “a symbol of the times, born from fire, smoke and necessity,” mentioning how it has evolved over three-and-half years from a concept album to a staged musical reading at SFBATCO’s New Roots Theatre Festival, and now, to a full-fledged piece.
Jackson and Harris have a long history. Both in the theater program at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, they met in the freshman dorm and moved into an apartment as sophomores. Harris says, “We were roommates for three years. We were really just best friends. I always honored and respected and looked up to him as an artist. I think he felt the same way about me and our connection. He started a theater company and brought me into this project. I feel very grateful and very blessed that that I met him there and that we’re doing this now.”
Harris, who grew up in Dallas and has been performing since she was 5, first realized that “The Day the Sky Turned Orange” might have a solid future when she saw the positive audience reaction at the New Roots fest.
There was another, more recent, omen of sorts, in January this year during a workshop for “The Day the Sky Turned Orange” in Los Angeles, when dangerous wildfires colored Southern California skies, and forced the show’s creators to evacuate the studio, and ultimately, the area.
“It was a very sobering experience for us,” says Harris, and “extremely creepy.” She adds, “I have pictures of us that day before we had to leave LA. It was almost like a sign that maybe what we’re doing matters.”
Although Harris never imagined she’d work on an original stage musical with Jackson back in their college days, today she’s inspired by his initiative with SFBATCO, a nonprofit he cofounded, and its mission to bring young people together, create art aimed at beneficial change and support the local community.
A seasoned artist wearing many hats—a former member of Postmodern Jukebox, she’s currently singing background vocals on tour with Teddy Swims and cannot be in San Francisco for the opening of “The Day the Sky Turned Orange” — Harris is resigned to living the rollercoaster life of a freelancer in show business, admitting, “It’s not for the faint of heart.”
As for appearing in the cast of “The Day the Sky Turned Orange,” she says, ‘No way! I couldn’t. It’s too close to me. I just got to let it go.”
Slated to be in San Francisco sometime during the run to participate in audience talkbacks, Harris says she’s also looking forward to having a break from touring and being at home cuddling with Donut, her Maltese mix: “She’s my soulmate.”
San Francisco Bay Area Theatre Company’s “The Day the Sky Turned Orange” runs Sept. 5-Oct. 5 at Z Space, 450 Florida St., San Francisco. Tickets are $25-$69 at sfbatco.org/orange-tickets.
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