Augustana’s Shelley Cooper Brings New Solo Musical to Moline’s Black Box
Many artists today use the trendy term “multi-hyphenate” – meaning they are triple threats or more, able to unleash many talents at once, like singing, dancing and acting.
Shelley Cooper, associate professor of musical theatre at Augustana College, has long been a multi-hyphenate, with impressive experience as a singer, director, actress, playwright, choreographer, producer and teacher. For her latest one-woman show (following acclaimed solo productions on the legendary singers Maria Callas and Jenny Lind), Cooper adds two new hyphens: composer and lyricist.
“Rag Doll on a Bomb Site” – a 50-minute meditation on the life and career of Austrian singer/actress Lotte Lenya (1898-1981), the wife and muse of composer Kurt Weill – will make its Quad Cities premiere Friday, Aug. 29, as part of the area’s first Solo Fringe Festival at Moline’s Black Box Theatre.
Cooper is a veteran performer at Fringe festivals on the West and East coasts, and brought “Rag Doll” to the Hollywood Fringe Festival this past June, where it earned many glowing reviews.
“Rag Doll on a Bomb Site” premiered in Thailand this past winter and was featured at Hollywood Fringe in Los Angeles this past June (photo by Pom Knight).
One of many raves of the show on the Hollywood Fringe website, by Soo Chyun, said:
“From the moment the lights came up, Shelley Cooper’s voice gripped the room—lush, expressive, and immediately arresting. In ‘Rag Doll on a Bomb Site,’ Cooper revives the story of Lotte Lenya, a lesser-known but formidable artist, through a fictionalized pre-show exchange with her husband, composer Kurt Weill.
“Rather than telling Lenya’s life in a straightforward chronology, Cooper crafts a dialogue-driven narrative that explores a pivotal moment just before a performance,” the review said. “Her vocals fill the black box theatre with haunting precision, supported by choreography that is as emotionally rich as it is elegantly restrained. Movement becomes language as she expresses fury, sorrow, and fleeting joy—all magnified by the contrast between her somber 1920s costume and the striking, evocative lighting design.
“What unfolds is not simply a biographical solo show, but an intimate act of resurrection. For 50 mesmerizing minutes, I was completely drawn into Cooper’s world—one shaped by trauma, survival, and defiant artistry. Her storytelling is visual, visceral, and deeply human,” Chyun wrote. “This is solo theatre at its most refined.”
“Rag Doll on a Bomb Site” will make its QC premiere at 7:30 p.m. Friday, Aug. 29 at the Black Box Theatre Solo Fringe Festival. (credit: Missy Myers of Capturing Fireflies Photography).
In “Rag Doll,” it’s opening night of The Threepenny Opera in Berlin, 1928, when Kurt Weill steps into Lotte Lenya’s dressing room and drops a bombshell that her name is not in the program. Absolutely furious, Kurt demands they cancel the opening night performance. Lenya laughs in his face, according to a synopsis.
She has been through far worse than this in her traumatic past. Lenya grew up in a slum, beaten repeatedly by a cruel father, endured hunger and crushing poverty, rape, and repeatedly found herself in morally compromising positions as she struggled to survive and advance herself, the show summary says.
She’s come so far, and now that she has her dream role, Kurt must allow her to go on stage and sing. But will he? Infusing a new contemporary score composed by two time off-Broadway award winner Shelley Cooper, contemporary choreography, with dazzling multimedia, this solo musical dance show takes a gritty look at a woman who fled her abusive home, and survived adversity. Where voice meets movement. Where story becomes motion.
Cooper took a sabbatical from the Rock Island private liberal-arts school in fall 2024, when she worked on creating “Rag Doll on a Bomb Site,” which premiered in Bangkok, Thailand Feb. 1, 2025, at the Goethe Institute. She was inspired after getting cast in Lenya’s landmark role of Jenny Diver in “The Threepenny Opera,” in a Hawaii production (originally scheduled for summer 2020, but never happened). Cooper learned about her as the muse of Kurt Weill and playwright Bertolt Brecht, acting and singing as one. Cooper directed an Augustana production of the work in spring 2022.
Cooper wrote original songs for the first time for her new solo musical (photo by Pom Knight).
Originally, she didn’t think she was right to play Jenny, but did research on Lenya, who years later had the role of Fraulein Schneider in the first production of “Cabaret” (1966), which Cooper directed at Augie in November 2022. “This is not a role I would usually play. This is a pickpocketing prostitute,” Cooper recalled of Jenny recently. “I love a challenge and I love when people make me think of myself as an artist in different ways.”
Writing original music
She did not at all plan to write her own songs for the solo musical. Cooper did a first reading of her play last summer in Austria, where Lenya was from, in the International University Global Theater Experiences Conference. Her plan was to use Weill music, but didn’t know what timeframe she wanted to do tell, mainly until his death in 1950.
“It was this mosaic of monologues,” Cooper said recently, noting she originally used Brecht and Weill songs. “I remember people being confused, like what is this?” Her nightmare was that it was going to turn into a lecture/recital, or a book report.
She really wanted to make something more theatrical of Lenya’s story.
Shelley Cooper is associate professor of musical theatre at Augustana College, Rock Island.
Cooper took a writing class on Zoom (with Soaring Solo Studios), narrowing the focus, and she found her childhood and early years most interesting. The true turning point was opening night of “Threepenny Opera,” when Lenya was 29.
She found her name was not in the opening night program, and Weill wanted to cancel the show. Lenya didn’t care, since she had been through so much in her life, Cooper said.
The show’s title is from a review Lenya had after the Berlin premiere performance. It said: “She’s like a rag doll on a bomb site – she has survived all defeats.”
“I loved that; I loved the imagery of that,” Cooper said. “I knew with this show, I wanted a bold title. I wanted it in your face.”
“That idea is so ingrained with Lotte Lenya. Because she went through so much adversity her whole life, I mean if you had one inch of the trauma that she had, it would be amazing that you’d be as successful and everything. So the fact she was able to rise above that adversity, I thought that image really conjured that up.”
A woman in Cooper’s class suggested that she write her own music for the show, but Cooper said she didn’t do that and never had before.
A week later, she reconsidered, and she wrote first “Lullaby From the Ashes,” the closing number of the show. She shared it in class, and got an overwhelmingly positive reaction, with people saying they could relate to it.
Shelley Cooper also has won laurels for her one-woman shows about opera stars Maria Callas (left) and Jenny Lind.
“If I write my own music, this will feel current and universal for the time, while still paying homage to the 1920s,” Cooper recalled. “The lyrics and melody lines are much more contemporary in nature, and the lyrics are poetic and speak to emotion.”
She wrote in a pop format, in standard verse/chorus, bridge, etc. She wondered whether it would work with Weill’s music.
Cooper sent the script to her director (Kelsey Miller, who directed Music Guild’s “Kinky Boots,” which Cooper choreographed), with the Kurt Weill music and her own songs. “I wanted to write something bold and emotional,” she said, noting she was very nervous to share her songs.
It expanded to be about 11 songs. From her flight to Bangkok, she went through some old lyrics and wanted a new song to show excitement of Lenya moving to Berlin, in the way Cooper was excited to move to New York. She recorded it on a Voice Memo as soon as she landed in Bangkok and sent it to her director, who liked it.
Cooper portrayed Musetta in the 2024 Opera Quad Cities production of “La Boheme” at Bettendorf High School.
Cooper wanted to write a song that reflected Lenya being a rape survivor, with her resilience and grit powering her to keep moving forward. “That to me is a big theme in the show and has been a big theme to me in my own life,” she said recently.
It would be premiered in her last version, at Hollywood Fringe, with another song about Lenya’s emotional abandonment as a child. Cooper said she partnered closely on the writing with her director, Miller.
Composing is the thing she is most proud of and energized about, she said. “A big part of this was, there was so much risk involved; I was so nervous,” Cooper recalled. “Bangkok was one thing, but going to one of the entertainment capitals of the world and premiering these songs. It was also thrilling; I was putting myself out there. I am a new composer. I have not been composing even a year, and here are 11 of my original songs in L.A.”
When she came home, more music poured out of her in a week. A new song will be part of the Black Box production, called “Shades of Gray.”
“There are some very subtle parallels, and more on-the-nose parallels” between Cooper’s life and Lenya’s, she said. “It’s so scary to share something like that, but when you do that, it’s such a thrill. I loved being able to dabble in this. For all my musical theater career, yes I love certain actors, directors and choreographers. The people I admire the most and put in the highest esteem were playwrights, composers and lyricists. I just think that skill set is so unique, special and it’s the heart of musical theater.”
“Rag Doll” has a very indie, lullaby, contemporary style, with lots of piano, written in a poetic, pop structure.
Cooper was influenced more by Weill as a composer – he was very soft-spoken, but wrote bold music and loved his wife, Lenya, so much. “He was the only one in her life who unconditionally loved her,” she said. “I think that’s a really beautiful thing.”
From Callas to Lind to Lenya
“Rag Doll” is her third one-woman show to focus on strong-willed international superstars. Her second (performed at Black Box in 2023) is “Jenny Lind Presents P.T. Barnum,” about when the “Swedish Nightingale” came to America in 1850, to tour with “The Greatest Showman” (Barnum), she witnessed a nation torn apart over slavery. She embarked on headline-grabbing tour that shared the spotlight with a political maelstrom.
That solo operatic show fact-checks The Greatest Showman, and the real reason Lind quit the tour, since she was uncomfortable with Barnum’s relentless marketing of her and his questionable moral compass or lack thereof. Cooper has performed it at Fort Worth Fringe, Orlando Fringe FestN4, Solofest in L.A. and Binge Fringe at Santa Monica Playhouse.
“La Divina: The Last Interview of Maria Callas” (which she’s also done at Black Box) is winner of the 2022 Best One Woman Show at United Solo Festival Off-Broadway, 2021 Orlando Fringe Critic’s Choice Award for Best Individual Performance in a Drama and Hollywood Pick of the Fringe. This one-woman show was inspired by the life and work of the dramatic 20th-century opera diva.
The audience eavesdrops on La Divina’s interview with an unseen Mike Wallace, taken on a journey through trauma, allowed glimpses of an extremely complex and tormented woman, and treated to some operatic gems (like the Jenny Lind show does) including “O Mio Babbino Caro,” “Habanera,” and “Vissi d’arte” – providing interesting tidbits from the singer’s life and delving into her complicated relationship with Aristotle Onassis, while offering insight into the singer’s own complications.
Sheley Cooper performing her “Rag Doll on a Bomb Site” in Bangkok, Thailand (photo by Pom Knight)
In the Lotte Lenya show, the conflict between the main character and the unspoken off-stage character is coming from a loving place, unlike her Callas and Lind shows, which were more obvious battles, Cooper said. Lenya had such a respect for the role of Jenny and how it was written in the music, she said.
Of Callas and Lind, Cooper has said: “They are vastly different people, but there is a through line that makes them similar (besides opera) and that is resilience.” That surely applies to Lenya as well.
Cooper wants audiences to come away from “Rag Doll” with a story about someone who’s suffered, who worked really hard, took the craft seriously and triumphed over her past.
“She owned what she went through; she didn’t pretend it didn’t happen and sweep it under the rug,” she said of Lenya. “She still had a successful and very fulfilling life. She was able to have a loving relationship despite all of the cruel things her father, in particular, put her through.”
She hopes people leave inspired, and if you’re a young actor, she hopes it inspires them to pursue their dream at all costs.
“Lotte Lenya didn’t care her name wasn’t in the program; she cared about the work,” Cooper said. “She respected the work and she wanted to perform. She didn’t care about the laurels and the awards. I love that lesson.”
She’s loved doing solo shows since she was little. In 2nd grade, she did a one-girl version of “The Velveteen Rabbit” in her basement for family. She told her life story and highlighted many classic Broadway songs in her one-woman tribute to Ethel Merman and Mary Martin in “Mary and Ethel: How I Learned to Sing,” done at Augustana’s Brunner Theatre Center in summer 2021.
Cooper is very passionate about sharing stories of strong women throughout history, with more authenticity, not blinded or overshadowed by the men in their lives. She’s featured women who do have strong men in their lives – Lotte Lenya/Kurt Weill, Jenny Lind/P.T. Barnum, and Maria Callas/Aristotle Onassis.
“Seeing that they are much more than that, and they are often so misrepresented,” Cooper said, noting Lenya has not as much. “I am still am telling more of her story, than of her story with Kurt Weill.”
“I think it’s important for me to bring these women’s stories to life, and through them, I’m able to weave some things in my own life experiences, without me playing myself,” she said.
Feeling thrills from Fringe fests
Cooper’s experience at Hollywood Fringe exceeded all her expectations, with most people admiring it.
“I was really proud of myself in how I handled the negative reviews,” she said. “I was able to shrug and move past it this time around. For the most part, it was overwhelmingly positive.”
Cooper was floored that it was featured in the big-time Hollywood Reporter. “That is the highest, in terms of articles and publications that has ever happened to me. That was such a surreal day. I was in constant happy tears.”
Cooper portrays Lotte Lenya on the opening night of “The Threepenny Opera” in 1928 Berlin (photo by Pom Knight).
Audiences have been touched and moved, particularly women, who want to talk with her afterward. When she was in Thailand, people mentioned the scene about Lenya’s abusive father, and respected that Cooper addressed it. They felt validated and seen even though it was hard to watch, she said.
The BBT Fringe Festival is a dream project for Lora Adams, the theater co-founder and artistic director, and since Cooper has done the Callas and Lind shows there, it made perfect sense to do the “Rag Doll” QC premiere there. Cooper called it her “second home.”
She has performed overall at Hollywood Fringe four times, United Solo in New York twice, and Orlando Fringe main festival once, a winter fest once, and once in spring. She’s done Solo Fest in Los Angeles twice.
“Doing these kind of festivals, you do learn a lot about yourself,” Cooper said. Another online Hollywood Fringe reviewer called “Rag Doll” a “testament to the transformative power of theater…”
Yelba Zoe McCourt lauded Cooper’s “captivating performance, embodying the resilient spirit of Lotte, who inspires us with her unwavering dedication to her craft. Shelley has the talent to choose such interesting topics. She also tackles the sensitive topic of sexual abuse with unflinching honesty, rendering a performance that is both riveting and unforgettable,” the review said. “The harmonious blend of score, dance, and multimedia elements creates a truly unforgettable theatrical experience, igniting a sense of hope and empowerment in the audience.”
“There are some very subtle parallels, and more on-the-nose parallels” between Cooper’s life and Lenya’s, she said. “It’s so scary to share something like that, but when you do that, it’s such a thrill. I loved being able to dabble in this. For all my musical theater career, yes I love certain actors, directors and choreographers. The people I admire the most and put in the highest esteem were playwrights, composers and lyricists. I just think that skill set is so unique, special and it’s the heart of musical theater.”
“Rag Doll” will be the second (7:30 p.m. this Friday) of several performances at the Black Box Solo Fringe, Aug. 29-31, and all performances are “pay what it’s worth” following each. Cooper most recently directed the last full production at Black Box, the musical “Ordinary Days,” which ran from Aug. 8 to 17. For more information on BBT (1623 5th Ave., Moline), click HERE.
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