Supernova: A Musical Comedy About Mental Health Finds Its Light
3 min read
Wikipedia defines a Supernova as “a powerful and luminous explosion of a star.”
On March 1st, 2023, Liza Dealey-Thomason got a familiar call that another one of her brothers had died by suicide. Familiar, in that of her four brothers, three of them took their own lives. The family are not strangers to trauma and immense grief caused by untimely death. The siblings who lost both their mother and step-mother to cancer experienced trauma, grief and mental health issues that often follow profound and unexpected loss. Rather than succumb to the dark forces of grief, she wanted to share her family’s story in hopes that doing so might help change the way suicide, mental health and emotional well-being are responded to by society.
Los Angeles Story Advocate Terrie Silverman and Dealey-Thomason met in September 2023 at a workshop Silverman gave at the Los Angeles Women’s Theatre Festival‘s Empowerment Weekend. What followed was a series of events, people, and opportunities serendipitously unfolding within months giving rise to Dealey-Thomason’s one-woman show, Supernova written, choreographed and performed by Liza Dealey-Thomason with music producer Drew Lawrence and Terrie Silverman, Director & Dramaturg.
The desire to tell her families story deepened into a broader conversation about happiness, spirituality, and one’s ability to experience life on life’s terms. Through art and connection to something bigger than all of us, she hopes to help others find their way to seeing joy and beauty in life in spite of…life. Synchronistically, now one year to the month since her brother’s passing, she will perform the show at the Los Angeles Women’s Theatre Festival’s “Rising Above” final evening March 31st, on the night co-hosted by Silverman.
Merriam-Webster Dictionary describes a Supernova as “the explosion of a star in which the star may reach a maximum intrinsic luminosity one billion times that of the sun.”
Supernova’s heroine, Liza, belongs to a family of superheroes tasked with saving humanity from a deadly emotional pandemic that causes people to self-destruct. Through multimedia, dance, and original music, she discovers that her spiritual superpowers are immense, however, the closer she gets to finding the cure for the pandemic, the farther away she’s carried from her own happiness. Ultimately she realizes she must heal herself before she can use her light to heal the world.
Supernova was originally performed December 17th, 2023 as a part of Soaring Solo’s Stars Series at the Zephyr Theatre, produced by Jessica Lynn Johnson & Heather Dowling. This month on March 31st at 7 PM, Dealey-Thomason will perform at the Los Angeles Women’s Theatre Festival at Theatre 68 Arts Complex (5112 Lankershim Boulevard, North Hollywood, CA 91601). Tickets are $25 and available at the Los Angeles Women’s Theatre Festival website. She will take Supernova to United-Solo Festival in New York City on April 17th and is a winner of a 2024 Hollywood Fringe Festival Scholarship with performances to be announced for this June in Hollywood, CA. In late August she will travel across the Atlantic to do the show in Scotland for a full run at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival.
Actress, singer, dancer, writer, and comedian, Liza Dealey-Thomason was born in Utah. She studied at Julliard’s Perry Mansfield, the American Musical and Dramatic Academy, and The American Theatre Wing. She received a BFA in Theatre Performance at Chapman University and has performed in London, New York City, California, and Utah doing regional and off-broadway plays and musicals.
**Sources for this article are from Liza Dealey-Thomason’s show program, bio and show synopsis, Soaring Solo Studio’s website and information provided by Director / Dramaturg, Terrie Silverman.
