BETTER OFF WITH YOU, A MUSICAL COMEDY ABOUT PARENTING YOUR OWN PARENTS, PREMIERES AT THE HOLLYWOOD FRINGE

What do you do when your aging parent needs someone to take care of them? The answer is glaringly obvious: get your sibling to do it.

Phoenix is a depressed children’s book author whose long-time girlfriend recently dumped her. Noah is a gambling-addicted, furniture salesman whose homelife is in shambles. The last thing this brother and sister pair want to do is take care of someone else. When they get the call that their mother nearly burned down their childhood home, they make the trip from LA to San Bernardino to check on her, all the while hoping that she isn’t losing her mind, and each wanting the other person to handle it if she is.

Better off with You tackles growing up, growing old, and parenting your own parents. This darkly comedic musical asks: what does it take to create a family and how do you keep one from falling apart?

Better off with You will make its debut at the Let Live Theater on June 9th as a part of The Hollywood Fringe Festival. With original music by Erika Ito (Let it Die), lyrics by Parker Lemal-Brown (Grease: Rise of the Pink Ladies), and book by Ashley Obinwanne (Lavender Collective), this show is guaranteed to give you something to smile about.

Tickets:
Tickets will be available starting May 1st at hollywoodfringe.org/projects/10424

Show Dates:
June 9th at 3pm (preview)
June 14th at 7pm
June 16th at 2pm

Location:
Actors Company, Let Live Theater, 916 N Formosa Ave, Los Angeles, CA 90046

Bios:
Ashley Obinwanne (Book Writer, Co-director) is a Black lesbian writer and filmmaker who was born in New York and raised in Nigeria. She enjoys writing grounded, character-driven, dramas and dramedies about interconnected groups of people, especially women. She has written, directed, and produced several short films, a one-act play, and the web series Lavender Collective. She is a graduate of the Writers Guild Foundation’s Support Staff Training Program. She resides in Los Angeles, and has worked on shows at Apple TV+ and CBS.

Parker Lemal-Brown (Lyricist, Co-director) is a writer, producer, and lyricist. Parker wrote on the musical series Grease: Rise of the Pink Ladies for Paramount Plus and worked in the Season 3 writers’ room for Bridgerton on Netflix. He has worked at Shondaland, NBC, ABC, eOne, and Amazon, including the movie Transparent: The Musicale Finale. Parker is currently a writing coach, a creative executive at Roadmap Writers, and a featured speaker at Cambridge Innovation Center.

Erika Ito (Composer) is a Japanese composer who has worked on a variety of video games, films, and musicals. She is best known for composing for the popular PS4 game Let It Die, which has been downloaded over 7 million times worldwide. Erika holds degrees from both Berklee College of Music and Amsterdam Conservatory, and also studied musical theater songwriting at NMI. In 2022 and 2023, respectively, she premiered her musicals Mother Russia and Camouflage Can’t Hide Me at the Hollywood Fringe Festival. Her musical Tomorrow, by the Sea won the Kennedy Center’s Musical Theatre Award in 2024. Erika is currently based in Tokyo and loves collaborating with writers and lyricists from diverse backgrounds around the world.

Media Contact:
Ashley Obinwanne
[email protected]