Johnny Appleweed

Composer	- Scott Miller
Lyricist	- Scott Miller
Writer	- Scott Miller
Date of 1st/Full Perf	- 19th June 2006 [Public Reading] (Art Loft Theatre, St. Louis)

Synopsis / Notes

Fiercely funny and outrageously original, Johnny Appleweed is a fearless political satire of America in the new millennium, guaranteed to outrage while it amuses, the first musical ever to make a serious case for the spiritual, existential, and psychological properties of marijuana. Through the lens of this pot-friendly worldview, the show takes aim at hot-button issues like the legalization of marijuana, sexual oppression, obscenity, increasingly rabid American religious fervor, American party politics, the War on Terror, the American culture of violence, gun control, gay marriage, and more, all through the lens of the laidback, neo-mythic purveyor of pot Johnny Appleweed, an itinerant philosopher-stoner, who argues that only through the mind-expanding properties of marijuana can we truly see the Larger Truths, so that we can finally solve our problems and move our civilization forward. The show has been described as a bizarre mix of Hair, The Daily Show, the films of Kevin Smith, Waiting for Godot, and The Wizard of Oz.

In the show, Johnny is on his way to Washington D.C. to tell the President he's screwing up our country and has to stop. Over the course of the first act, Johnny meets up with a lesbian performance artist, a Christian-Republican closet-case, Jesus Christ himself, and a perky former televangelist. In Act II, this gang of five finally meets the President and they set about trying to convince him to change his political ways. One of the friends, the closet-case Mark, becomes the story's hero, and his journey becomes a classic hero myth, not unlike those that have been passed down through the centuries, with the requisite "wise wizard" (Johnny) a magic amulet (marijuana), and other trappings of the great elemental myths.