Speakeasy
A jazz-fueled original musical about a queer sanctuary built from nothing in Prohibition-era Chicago, where joy itself has become an act of resistance.
Status: full libretto and score complete, submission-ready. Seeking development, festival consideration, and press coverage.
Show Overview
Genre
Musical drama, jazz-infused original score
Setting
1927, Chicago. The Velvet Boot, a queer speakeasy, and the streets divided by Prohibition, prejudice, and power.
Cast
10 principal roles, flexible ensemble (8 to 12, doubling possible)
Running Time
Approximately 2 hours, one intermission
Orchestration
6 to 10 piece jazz ensemble. Fully producible with a small combo; expandable to full orchestral strength.
Development Status
Full libretto complete. Full score composed and demoed by the writer. Available now for readings, festival consideration, and development.
Primary Development Targets
NAMT Festival of New Musicals, the O’Neill National Music Theater Conference
Synopsis Snapshot
Speakeasy transports audiences to a hidden world: the Velvet Boot, a roaring 1920s queer speakeasy pulsing with jazz, drag, and defiance.
When Jules, the daughter of a police sergeant, falls for Rome, the son of a bootlegging kingpin, their love sparks an uprising of joy,
identity, and resistance.
The romance is the spark. The community is the fire. Around the two lovers stands a found family who built a sanctuary from nothing: Merc, Rome’s fiercely loyal best friend, guarding a love of his own he may never get to have; Miss Addie, a Black queer woman who spent a lifetime surviving in silence and is finally done with it; and a chorus of outsiders who refuse to be erased.
As the raids close in, the show asks what a community will pay to keep its joy alive, and who is left to carry the story forward.
It’s Hadestown meets Cabaret by way of a drag ball, with a shot of protest and a splash of sequins.
(For interviews or reviews that need the full arc, including the ending, request the extended synopsis.)
Why Now
Speakeasy is set in the world of the real Pansy Craze, a genuine explosion of queer nightlife across American cities in the late 1920s and early 1930s that was raided, padlocked, and erased so completely that most people, including most queer people, have never heard of it.
In an era of anti-drag laws, book bans, and rising visibility followed by rising backlash, the parallel is not subtext. It is the point.
One character’s line carries the spine of the show: if you are silent about your pain, they will kill you and say you enjoyed it.
Speakeasy is not only about forbidden love. It is about chosen family, intergenerational resistance, and the refusal to be quiet again.
What It's Really About
Queer love as sacred.
Not a subplot. The main event, treated with the urgency and danger it deserves.
Joy as rebellion.
The Velvet Boot is not just a club. It is a sanctuary built from nothing, where drag, music, and found family are revolutionary acts in the face of state violence and erasure.
Breaking generational cycles.
Rome and Jules do not just defy their families. They defy the systems those families represent: patriarchy, religious control, inherited violence.
Visibility as survival.
From a closeted cop to the loudest queen in the room, every character wrestles with being seen, and what it costs.
Chosen family as revolution.
Miss Addie, Merc, and the ensemble are a lineage of queer survival. Their care and sacrifice are the foundation the next generation stands on.
Storytelling as resistance. A reclamation, not just a retelling. When history leaves you out, you write your own libretto.
“Joy like this is worth the cost.” , from “Two Different Worlds (Reprise)”
Listen
The score is real, composed and demoed in full by the writer, and now beginning to reach the public as Sessions from the Velvet Boot, a series of live single releases pulled directly from the show.
“Cracked Bottles, Broken Hearts” (Live), out October 9, 2026, the first
entry in the series.
Full demo playlist on SoundCloud.
Sheet music and additional recordings available on request for review or evaluation.
Media Angles & Stories
1. “A Deaf Composer Wrote a Jazz Score He Will Never Hear.”
Waymon Hudson composes through vibration, memory, and the physical sense of rhythm in a room, not through hearing. He wrote every note of an original jazz musical this way, then learned to perform it himself. Not a story about limitation. A story about a different, rarer way into music.
2. “The Erased Chapter of Queer History Getting Its Musical.”
Most people have never heard of the Pansy Craze, a real explosion of queer nightlife that America buried. Speakeasy is bringing it back, in jazz.
3. “A Drag Bar. A Bible Belt. A Bombshell Love Story.”
Speakeasy reclaims a classic tragedy for the queer, the rebellious, and the erased.
4. “This Is the Queer Canon We Were Never Given in School.”
A radical original musical centering queer voices, Black love, and chosen family, set against a real, nearly-forgotten history.
5. “Jazz, Justice, and Joy: Inside the World of Speakeasy.”
A new musical where mascara meets Molotov cocktails, and joy itself is the protest.
6. “The Elder Role Musical Theatre Doesn’t Usually Write.”
Miss Addie isn’t the wise sidekick. She is the memory of a movement, and a genuine dream role for an older actor in a landscape that rarely offers one.
7. “The Activist Who Turned Decades of Organizing Into a Musical.”
Before Speakeasy, Waymon Hudson founded and ran an LGBTQ+ advocacy organization for decades. The show’s defiance is not an aesthetic choice. It is a lived one.
Quote Bank
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“They didn’t die for who they loved. They died because they dared to love out loud.” , Miss Addie
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“Joy like this is worth the cost.” , “Two Different Worlds (Reprise)”
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“You carried all of us long before any of us knew how to carry ourselves. Tonight, let us carry you.” , Merc, to Miss Addie
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“The romance is the spark. The community is the fire.” , creator’s framing of the show
Short Bio
Waymon Hudson is a Deaf writer, musician, and longtime LGBTQ+ activist, late-deafened as an adult.
He composes through vibration, memory, and physical sensation, the lens his work is built through, not a limitation it overcomes.
His writing has appeared in HuffPost, the Chicago Tribune, and Encyclopedia Britannica’s blog, and he founded and led the LGBTQ+ advocacy organization Fight Out Loud for a decade, with coverage from CNN, MSNBC, and The New York Times.
Speakeasy is his first musical, book, music, and lyrics, performed in demo by the writer himself.
Full Bio
Waymon Hudson is a Deaf writer, musician, and longtime LGBTQ+ activist, late-deafened as an adult. He composes through vibration, memory, and physical sensation rather than hearing, the lens his work is built through, not a limitation it overcomes. He records each element of a song alone, so he can feel it before it ever meets another sound. His body is the studio monitor.
Speakeasy is his first musical, written in full, book, music, and lyrics, and performed in demo by the writer himself. It draws its architecture from Romeo and Juliet and its history from the Pansy Craze, a real, nearly-erased chapter of queer nightlife, to ask what a community pays to keep its joy alive.
The defiance is not a pose. Before Speakeasy, Hudson founded and led the LGBTQ+ advocacy organization Fight Out Loud (2007 to 2017), covered by CNN, MSNBC, and The New York Times, and served as Midwest Regional Co-Chair for The Trevor Project. He has contributed to HuffPost, the Chicago Tribune, and Encyclopedia Britannica’s blog.
Across music, literary horror, memoir, and stage, the work is the same: sensation turned into story, always from the body, always unmistakably his. He is also, when the moment calls for it, very funny.
The Details
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Comparable properties: Hadestown and Ragtime by way of Cabaret. Its closest emotional relative may be Ragtime, private love colliding with public history, where history moves whether the lovers are ready or not.
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Musical style: Big band swing, torch balladry, and gospel-inflected belting inside one contemporary theatrical voice. Reads as fresh but classic Broadway.
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Development status: Full libretto complete, full score composed and demoed. Submission-ready.
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Seeking: Developmental readings, festival consideration (NAMT, O’Neill), production partners. Open to a collaborator for orchestration and music direction.
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Available materials: Full libretto, demo recordings, sheet music samples, submission packet, creator bio, extended synopsis on request.
Roles Worth Fighting For
Speakeasy offers powerful, leading roles for Black, brown, queer, trans and gender-expansive, and Deaf and disabled performers. Not a diversity footnote. The fabric of the show.
Its creator writes from inside part of that experience too: Waymon Hudson is Deaf, late-deafened as an adult, and the commitment to Deaf and disabled performers on this stage isn’t a gesture.
It’s personal.
Press Photos
CONTACT & FOLLOW
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Press / submissions: info@waymonhudson.com
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Website: waymonhudson.com/speakeasy
Creator of Speakeasy, an original queer jazz musical.