A Senior Thesis Project in Musical Theater Composition for Ben Kramer

This senior thesis in musical theater composition follows the lives of five men—all 22 years old and gay in five different years between 1969 and 2023—over the course of a single calendar year, from New Year’s Eve to New Year’s Eve. Presented as a series of intertwined musical monologues, the piece explores the intergenerational experience of gay identity, centered around collective memory of the AIDS crisis. Together, these five men’s stories build a mosaic of love, loss, and hope in contemporary gay America. At the core is one crucial question: what does it mean to love another man?