'It's wacky, zany and fun': Young composer Sushi Soucy debuts cosmic musical comedy, 'Rockabye'

Hyper-creative writer/composer Sushi Soucy has written more material before the age of twenty than most artists create in a lifetime. So far, the 19-year-old Savannah native has written 20 musicals, six comedy routines, three tv/web series, two cartoons, eight short films, over a hundred short stories, four albums, four singles, and more.

Sushi’s recent single, “I Deserve to Bleed,” an uptempo, ukulele accompanied song about dark, self-loathing, intrusive thoughts that many young people can relate to, has racked up over 26 million streams on Spotify and other streaming services.

Now, after years of grinding and creating, the prolific Sushi is finally bringing one of their musicals to the stage with the debut of “Rockabye,” a campy cosmic musical comedy about a young up-and-coming rock band that are hired to write a lullaby for the Lovecraftian eldritch horror Azathoth.

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“I never produced any of my musicals until now,” said Sushi in a phone interview along with their aunt and “Rockabye” director JinHi Soucy Rand.

“I had just written them and sometimes I’ll release albums for them. The first musical I ever wrote, I was obsessed with ‘How to Train Your Dragon,’ so I decided to turn it into a musical at the ripe age of 12. One of the songs I wrote, I actually entered it into a song competition and I won. I remember thinking in my brain, ‘Wow, writing music is not as hard as everyone says it is,’ but then when I go back and listen to that song of mine I’m like, ‘Yeeesh!’ I’ve improved a lot since then, but it’s good that I discovered a passion that early.”

Sushi comes from a theater and music family. Sushi’s father, Chris Soucy, is the co-founder of Odd Lot Improv and other theater companies, and their mother, Kelly Blackmarr, was the choir director for the Unitarian Universalist Church of Savannah.

“I’ve been a theater kid since before I was born because while my mom was pregnant with me she was music directing for ‘West Side Story’,” said Sushi. “My dad’s side of the family has also been into the arts. Obviously, JinHi is a director and has been in a billion productions. And my dad owns multiple theater companies, so my whole life I grew up around the arts and was heavily encouraged to pursue my passions.”

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“They were a born storyteller,” JinHi added proudly.

“Rockabye” is a labor of love for Sushi, and a family and friends production. Sushi’s father and uncle are creating props for the show utilizing flat Styrofoam to invoke a 2D comic book aesthetic. They are also creating make-up effects and constructing a giant puppet to represent the creature Azathoth.

Sushi orchestrated and wrote all of the music on a computer, and then sent tracks to be mixed and mastered by another family friend, Leonard Rose.

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“He is making the tracks sound more real, because the synth instruments I wrote with sound godawful,” Sushi said with a laugh. “I really appreciate him helping with that.”

One of the biggest challenges for Sushi and JinHi in producing “Rockabye” was assembling the cast who all had to be brought in from out of town.

“I had to recast Xander twice,” explained Sushi. “I had to recast Adil four times. I had recast Calypso once. It’s been a lot of trouble to wrangle the whole cast together and get them down for the amount of time that we need, because everyone is coming down at different times. Of course, we have to focus on financial challenges, as well, of giving the cast the amount of compensation they need, and also housing. Organizing all of that was definitely a challenge, but I think we finally got it down.”

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JinHi added, “This has also been a challenging production partly because it’s a new production and a new musical. The cast comes from all over the country. We have people coming from New York, Philadelphia, South Carolina, New Orleans. We’ve been rehearsing online until four days ago. It’s been wonderful to have them all here and working together. I have to say, it’s come together very beautifully, to come from online to in-person ready to go.”

The cast of “Rockabye” is comprised almost entirely of young BIPOC and LGBTQ+ actors which was an essential element for the production.

“I’m queer,” explained Sushi. “I’m trans and also bi, and also I’m Korean on my dad’s side, so representation has always been important to me because it’s been so scarce on the media that I consume and enjoy. I always noticed growing up that the representation on TV and movies of characters wasn’t exactly something that I could relate to. One day I decided I was going to make my own.

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“There are definitely some moments [in “Rockabye”] where characters talk about their identities, but for the most part there are very openly queer relationships in the show, and they’re not tragic which a lot of queer relationships in the media are. There’s the ‘bury your gays’ trope which is basically if two people who are queer are in love, one of them have to die and there has to be suffering. In this show, even though there is suffering, it’s not the type of suffering you usually see, and it’s very campy. It’s overall a comedy and super fun.

"The queer relationships and racial identity of the characters are part of the story, but they’re not taking over the story.”

“Rockabye” will be at Club One’s Bay Street Theatre for three days beginning Sept. 2.

Although admission is 21 and up (18+ on Sunday evening), the production will be available later on YouTube. But don’t miss this seeing this unique production from a young star on the rise in the theatre if you can help it.

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“Be prepared to have a lot of fun, because that’s what this show is at it’s core,” said Sushi. “It’s ridiculous, it’s wacky, it’s zany, it’s fun.”

This article originally appeared on Savannah Morning News: Savannah GA events: Rockabye musical by Sushi Soucy