The Schmidt Sisters

The Schmidt Sisters: A Revolutionary Situation is a new original musical following the (mostly) true story of Elizaveta and Ekaterina Schmidt, two young heiresses in turn-of-the-century Russia. After their late brother bestows a hefty inheritance on them, Vladimir Lenin (yes, that Lenin) sends two trusted comrades to woo and marry them to get the money. One couple is diametrically opposed while the other falls so in love they are blinded to their surroundings. This show has everything: Fake marriage! Queer love! Heavy drinking! A play-within-a-play! Vladimir Lenin! Bolsheviks! Revolution! Blood! Murder! Beer!

This musical has been in development for 5 years. Early on there was a Zoom reading, then jam sessions in our respective living rooms to sing through the score with friends, a concert performance of one of the songs at Green Room 42 in NYC, presentations of excerpts at the MusicalWriters festival in Texas, and a staged reading at The Chain Theater in NYC with the Emerging Artists Theatre’s Spark Theater Festival which was performed to a sold-out house with an audience of just over 100 and a waitlist. The response: A standing ovation, rave reviews, and one pressing question: What's next?

What are we funding?

This past July, we recorded an EP (otherwise known as a mini album) of highlights from our musical The Schmidt Sisters: A Revolutionary Situation. We prepared for months doing research, making rehearsal tracks, coordinating schedules, renting studio space, and so on. We brought 11 singers into the studio over the course of three days and laid down vocals for 6 tracks. Our friend Victor Jones generously offered to engineer and mix the EP on an astronomically tiny budget. Unfortunately, after mixing one of the six tracks, Victor's music career blew up online and they became kinda famous, leaving them no time to devote to our EP. We knew we would not be able to find someone else to mix our EP on such a small budget. It would realistically cost hundreds, if not thousands more. We were not going to let this get in our way, though, not after all the work we had already put into this.

Thankfully, we found a new sound mixer for this project who is giving us another generous offer to work within a modest budget. Still, it is much more than we anticipated spending when we committed to this and much more than we can afford between the three of us. That's where you come in!

We are asking for your help to raise a minimum of $2000 to cover mixing, mastering, and music distribution fees. Once we reach our initial goal, any additional funds raised between $2001 and $3800 will be distributed to our singers. Any additional funds raised past $3800 will go toward future productions of The Schmidt Sisters.

Why an EP?

Our EP will be a wonderful tool for

Pitching - The EP will serve as high-quality demos to give an idea of the show's tone, musical style, emotional beats, and more when pitching to potential producers
Growing our audience - We will be able to use these tracks to create content for social media, advertising, and marketing to grow The Schmidt Sisters' audience
Entertainment - We plan to release the EP on all streaming platforms
Revenue - Any funds we make from streaming the EP can go toward future The Schmidt Sisters production costs

How we got here

Rebecca Farley and Margo Hera met in October 2020, when they were both working on “Save the Libraries: No on #2!,” a political campaign in New Orleans to save the public library from a 30% budget cut. Margo and Rebecca worked as co-volunteer coordinators for this campaign. Operating from Zoom, they galvanized over 200 volunteers across the New Orleans metropolitan area over the course of two months. They organized daily phonebanking sessions — both Rebecca and Margo make pretty awesome phonebankers — and sent volunteers across the city to wave signs on election day. And they won the campaign! A group of several hundred library-obsessed volunteers saved the local libraries!

The Schmidt Sisters feels like the natural child of this union. While celebrating this win, Rebecca and Margo discussed their pandemic goals. Rebecca told Margo about a story she couldn’t stop thinking about in a book about Lenin — a book from the library, no less! — that she had the goal of turning into a musical. Margo confessed she wrote lyrics. Rebecca confessed she wrote librettos. They decided they would continue their political partnership by writing a musical. Now they needed a composer. Margo found Ashlynn Hazel Pilger, a recently graduated composer from Boston Conservatory, through mutual friends. Ashlynn composed with an astonishing attention to detail. Margo was ferociously organized, meticulous, and erudite. Rebecca dreamed and wrote a lot. They all learned a lot about Stravinsky.

They worked in their separate corners of the country, meeting over Zoom and phone calls, working away in Google Drive, until February of 2024, when they finally all convened in person in New Orleans for a week-long writing retreat. They got to work writing more intensely than ever and submitting to theatre festivals and competitions.

They fell in love with this story in 2020 because they felt subterranean movement in the political status quo. Something was happening. The coronavirus roamed freely while our bank accounts shriveled. A recession loomed. We surrendered all dreams of getting out of debt. The New Orleans mayor tried to defund the libraries. We wanted to look at the story of the Schmidt sisters through the lens of today; perhaps we also wanted to show the world that collective movement is painful, politics are personal, and only deep, authentic, hooksian love can see us through.

Who are we?

The Writers

Book - Rebecca Farley (she/her) is a writer living in her native New Orleans, Louisiana. She has a Bachelor’s in creative writing from Columbia University, where she wrote books for two musicals. She studied musical theater in high school at the New Orleans Center for Creative Arts and the Professional Performing Arts School in New York City. Most recently, Antigravity Magazine published her work. She previously wrote for Martha Stewart Living Digital and Refinery29, a women’s website. In her spare time, she works in labor organizing and harm reduction.

Lyrics - Margo Hera (she/her) is a multi-hyphenate theater artist who lives in New York City after escaping her hometown in South Florida. In between those cities she got her B.A. in Theatre Performance and B.S. in Psychology and Gender & Sexuality Studies at Tulane University in New Orleans. She also studied theatre in middle and high school at Bak Middle School of the Arts and Dreyfoos High School of the Arts. This is her first foray into writing a musical after a lifetime of working onstage. She is part of the musical improv team Elevator Pitch which started as a house ensembles team at the People’s Improv Theatre. She can be seen doing theatre, standup, improv, and sketch comedy around the city.

Music - Ashlynn Hazel Pilger (they/she) is a non-binary composer, music director, and pianist residing in Portland, Oregon. They received their BM in Composition at Boston Conservatory at Berklee in 2020 under Jonathan Bailey Holland, Marti Epstein, and Eun Young Lee. Additionally, Ashlynn took musical theatre writing classes with Michael Wartofsky and David Reiffel at Berklee College of Music. For 8 years, they music directed at educational, community, and professional theatres. Ashlynn wrote a full-length musical entitled Indigo with their brother, and the reading was performed in Boston Conservatory. Additionally, Ashlynn is a mathematics educator and tutor. They have an MS in Mathematics from Portland State University and started their PhD program last fall. Ashlynn is a proud member of the Musical Theatre Writing Collective.

The Singers

Maxwell Swangel

Gina Simone Pemberton

Izzy Ochocki

Melissa Tormene

Alec Ludacka

Joe Montoya

Jessie Rathbun

Hunter Martin

Ali Molaei

Margo Hera

Ashlynn Hazel Pilger

A sneak peek!

Here is some behind-the-scenes footage from one of our recording sessions

Here is a video featuring the one track our friend Victor Jones was able to mix before their music career took off!

And here is a candid video of Ashlynn jamming out during another recording session.

Don't you want to bring that kind of joy to everyone who will get to stream our EP once it's mixed and mastered? Contribute today!

Fund The Schmidt Sisters Mini Album

Let's finish what we started!

Team Members