Avid viewers of this site or our social media channels may have noticed: our latest production, Death Do Us Part, is opening this August! 

Death Do Us Part is a new western musical, a high-fantasy adventure set against the backdrop of Arizona during the dying days of the Old West. With live barfights, train robberies, grave shenanigans, and more, it'll have you stocked up on thrills for days to follow, set to an 18-track original jazz-western score with plenty of heartthrobs and foot-tappers. 

Death Do Us Part follows Mikey Tucker, a young grave robber, guided by the spirit of legendary outlaw Jesse Sheppard, on an adventure to save the American Southwest from the resurrection of its greatest villains: outlaws, killers, and the like. Along the way, the pair will encounter such infamous names as Billy The Kid, Belle Starr, and Butch Cassidy, facing off against their obsessed heirs-to-be, the notorious Ford Bandits. This magical alternate history will take the audience on a journey of triumphant comedic highs and challenging dramatic moments; undoubtedly, a musical evening...

to die for.

Pictured above are various shots of our cast during choreography rehearsals. 

As usual, Death Do Us Part is an entirely student-helmed production. I am very proud to be the director and co-writer of this show alongside the phenomenal Ben Teller, a local composer and my best friend, retaining our creative partnership from our previous work, Bruisers. His music sets a jazzy soundscape for the weird and wild picture of 1920's Arizona we're making, orchestrated in full by a 6-piece student band.

Gavin Evanson returns to the Rigby Theater Company as Death Do Us Part's choreographer, joined by Sadie Maddox, asst. Choreographer, both rising to the challenge of creating a unique visual identity for the piece through the fine-tuned movement of ghouls, Payson drunkards, and dead legends, reanimated with fighting fervor. 

In a first for the Rigby Theater Company, student architect Lucas Gomez has constructed a full multi-piece set, including an open grave, a train, and a silver mine, bringing elegance and form to the script through its static visual identity. 

The full student crew of Death Do Us Part is led by technical director and lighting designer Sophia Castaneda and stage manager Nate Wiley, creating custom costumes (By Joleen Byrd) and props (By Jack Magnuson) for the production.

The cast includes:

Sylas Smith, Sofia Borras, Lucas Winstead, Ivan Medina, Holden Salica, Savana Dorame, Larkyn Foster, Cece Harris, Sadie Maddox, Julian Gutierrez-Ahumada, Xavier Campillo, Jaydin Rhodes, Noah Estep, Myalyn Divens, Sydney Johnson, Ben Koskiniemi, Madison Hill, and Grace Keane.

These actors and creatives have been featured on the largest youth and professional stages in Arizona, with many accruing accolades in Nationwide competitions for their work in the theatrical arts. These are, in my belief, tomorrow's industry leaders, working in Tucson today.

If seeing their work sounds enticing to you, we'd love to meet you down at the Pima Community College Center for the Arts Proscenium Theatre this August!

Want more info?

We'll be updating this site and our social media channels with more details and sneak peeks of the show as it develops. Please, stay tuned! 

On a more personal note, of these projects associated with the Rigby Theater Company, this has easily been the most difficult and most rewarding. In our overarching mission to make theater more accessible and meaningful for students in our communities, the expansion of reach that Death Do Us Part promises is beyond exciting. We're working with quintuple the amount of students across our cast, crew, creative, and band to mount a show in a venue quadruple the size of our previous one. Those numbers, and a million other expected challenges of our first full-scale production, kept me up at night for a while. Yet, time and time again, the effort and enthusiasm that Tucson's student artists have shown up with in the room blows any expectation I've had out of the water. I hope that the extreme talent and professionalism these students display, often comparable to that of established, adult artists I've worked alongside, is as evident to you all as it is to me. To everyone involved with this project, thank you, and I'm excited to reveal our work for all of Tucson soon.