BRIDGE CITY

 Kennen Butler’s

Bridge City is an original musical by Kennen Butler and developed with American Legacy Theatre through its Playwrights for Change program. At its heart, Bridge City celebrates love, joy, and resilience within the Black community — normalizing the Black experience without centering trauma.

Butler describes the show as “like Legally Blonde but for Black folk” — bold, fun, witty, and full of music that makes you laugh, reflect, and feel seen.

Bridge City explores community identity, gentrification, and the everyday reality of code-switching—that shifting between voices and selves that many are forced to perform just to belong.

And the story doesn’t grow in isolation. Bridge City is being shaped hand-in-hand with the community. At public readings and sing-throughs, audiences share feedback that directly informs the script’s next steps. It’s a show built not just for the community, but with the community.

COMING APRIL 2026

GET TICKETS TO THE WORLD PREMIERE

Watch the Promo Video

What Early Audiences are Saying

“I got goosebumps.”

“The music is FABULOUS!”

“A celebration of community.”

“Vibes are incredible!”

Community Partners

Our Playwrights for Change productions grow stronger when we join forces with organizations who share our mission of equity, empathy, and community impact.

We’re always looking for partners to help us activate audiences, amplify dialogue, and connect the stories on stage to the work happening every day in our communities.

If your organization is interested in collaborating on Bridge City or future productions, reach out to our Arts Impact Program Director, Dora Bayliss, at dora.bayliss@americanlegacytheatre.org.

What’s Next

  • Five public readings already held

  • Full-scale production coming April 2026

  • Continued development with community input along the way

Meet the Creative Team

  • PLAYWRIGHT, COMPOSER, LYRICIST

    Kennen is a NYC-based performer-composer, director, choreographer, and storyteller born in Flint, MI, but raised in Newburgh, NY. Their cross-genre career spans musical theatre and commercial music. A proud member of Actors Equity, their diverse theatre credits include the revival of Seussical the Musical Off-Broadway/Tour (Wickersham), Hairspray (u/s Seaweed), Tommy (u/s Acid Queen), Diary of a Payphone (Original Cast Recording), Aida (Mereb), Urinetown (Senator Fipp), Legally Blonde (Emmett), Knock Down Drag Out (Zonna), and Songs for a New World (Man 1) among others. They spent time as a background vocalist for acts like Toby Beau. Abroad, they served as a Creative Consultant for Universal Studios Osaka as well as being a swing for the company. They would also serve as director/choreographer for a Japanese production company called Team Utsubo where they mounted revue musicals in both English and Japanese. 

    While their love for harmony and stories would be their entry point into music and musical theatre, it would be their experiences navigating being black in environments that undervalue you and being nonbinary in a time were there wasn’t a word or place for you that sparked their interest in adding their voice to the current musical climate. Under the name “Kennen Jakhan & the Story” they performed their original English and Japanese commercial music around Osaka and the south of Japan before making the transition back to the United States.

    They graduated magna cum laude from Berklee College of Music in Boston where they studied Contemporary Writing and Production with a double minor in Musical Theatre Writing and Vocal Pedagogy. They have returned to NYC to pursue their masters in Musical Theatre Writing at NYU Tisch.

  • PRODUCER, DIRECTOR, DESIGNER

    Matthew has successfully acted and directed across the country, in Europe, and in Asia.

    Matthew is proud to have served as a U.S. representative at the UNESCO
    International Theatre Institute Research Lab in Romania. He was named a Promising Artist of the 21st Century by the International Arts and Cultural Exchange, and he has published papers on directorial theory in international peer-reviewed journals. He has also been recognized as one of Cincinnati Business Courier’s Forty Under 40.

    His financial background includes serving as U.S. delegate to the People’s Republic of China for foreign business affairs and and serving on the Association of Fundraising Professionals Foundation for Philanthropy USA Board of Directors.

Support the Journey

Bridge City is being developed through ALT’s Playwrights for Change residency, supported in part by the Carol Ann and Ralph V. Haile Jr. Foundation. Your support helps us bring this bold new work from page to stage.