A Blessing on the Moon is a new music-theater work composed by Andy Teirstein, and based on the novel by Teirstein’s collaborator, Joseph Skibell (the novel was published by Algonquin Books, 1997). Joseph Skibell often describes A Blessing on the Moon as “a novel masquerading as a folk tale.” Andy Teirstein describes his musical adaptation as “an opera masquerading as a folk spiel.” The journey of Chaim Skibelski, who has just been shot dead, and his Rabbi, who is now a crow, as they wander through Poland searching for an afterlife, lends itself easily to the genre of music-theater. Words, music and movement can be expressive of the edges of experience explored in the magical realism of this epic narrative, which contains wry humor, poetry, and a sharp sense of each character's perspective, even extending to the Polish family that has moved into the protagonist’s home, and the German soldier who has shot him. Co-sponsored by The Creative Writing Program and The Goldwasser Fund.