Watch out Book Of Mormon. Slam Frank is coming! I had the great opportunity of seeing Slam Frank during its Off-Broadway previews at the Orpheum Theatre in the East Village of Manhattan, where it opened on October 4, 2026
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Co-creators Joel Sinenesky (Book) and Andrew Fox (Music/Lyrics) were inspired to create Slam Frank by a 2022 viral Twitter argument that – in all seriousness – questioned whether or not Anne Frank (who died at the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp at the age of 15) ever acknowledged her “white privilege”! For their musical, Fox and Sinenesky create a progressive community theatre company onstage who, over the course of 1 hr and 45 min (with no intermission), re-imagine Anne Frank’s story through shockingly satirical, hype-woke 2026 eyes that transcends all taste and decency. Lyricist Fox has said the play’s politics are “intentionally elusive, but it’s main target is identity-politics excesses.”
Being a designer myself, my favorite contributor to the incredible experience of Slam Frank is its lighting designer Jamie Roderick, who was weaving his artistry with a minimal lighting package, in a space that’s hardly user friendly, operating with an Off-Broadway budget, on an extremely “over-the-top” musical. It was truly astounding to me how this talented young designer skillfully managed to support director Sam LaFrage's emotional arc and artistically drive the action of this incredibly diverse musical, as fast as the pace was moving.
His lighting effectively augmented a myriad of moods in a variety of locations, creatively directing our attention to the details important to each scene. After the preview show I attended, I found Roderick at the ETC Ion lighting console in the back of the 250-seat orchestra section – where he himself was programming – live in real time.
I asked Roderick how he came to be involved with the show. “It was quite serendipitous that it has come full circle, and now to be a part of it. The team came to me on a recommendation that artistically the show is my style, and I could handle being the designer, the programmer, not having an assistant, and being my own electrician. The show isn’t just making a statement about the state of theatre, but we are also challenging the production model and many production norms. I truly believe in what the show is saying about the state of contemporary theatre, so I was willing to dive in fully, essentially living in the theatre for the past month," he explains.
"It's been a meaningful moment for me being asked to be a part of Slam Frank," adds Roderick. "I had been following the show for years, but at a distance. You could say I was a fan from the beginning having attended the first public presentation which was just a reading at asylum months before the workshop production there. I attended out of curiosity because their social media had taken over my feeds and was speaking to what I had watched with my own eyes. My industry slowly turned into an industry that no longer put storytelling first, but put preaching first and story second. Slam Frank was here to challenge that by doing an extreme version of what was happening in our own community," he points out.
I was fascinated by his design and questioned him about his process: “The show is a play within a play and thus I was able to use that as a tool to reference light looks from shows our own show is parodying, things I admire or even in my own history. There are moments I’m leaning into starkness, as if Jamie Lloyd directed it. There is even a moment in Spring Awakening I admire, that has lived in my head rent free for 20 years now,” notes Roderick. “I have been able to use my real-life experiences with how I lit those shows, and how a director wanted them lit, to copy myself and create a very true version of the play within a play in Slam Frank.”
LaFrage’s fast-paced opus switches between typical, ‘normal’ book scenes to traditional musical theatre, then to numbers that are like a major concert at an arena. Roderick supports that pace with breakneck agility, and an incredible amount of programming, to keep his lighting design aggressively driving the pace of the show forward: “It’s currently 990 light cues. A significant amount of the show is run via SMPTE timecode coming from the Abelton software rig the band uses from their space in a room three floors above the stage. I was able to make the process go smoother by implementing my own product – Cued Up! – that I’ve been developing and is currently in beta testing. For me, the work starts on the page, with notations in the script from a designer-run and/or demo reference tracks of the music. Cued Up! is a script annotation software that allows me to use my normal workflow of starting on the page but importing from my script the entire cue structure into the lighting console, with descriptions and placements in the cue labels. This keeps my eyes on the stage and fingers on the console instead of reaching for a physical script or my laptop.”
The lighting design rig – with equipment provided by PRG (and Tom Smith) – is what some might consider very sparse, and somewhat unconventional (see gear list below), but he used it very effectively. I was fascinated by his choice of equipment and was also impressed with his use of Glasson Electronics’ Calesco system digital LED lines festooned all around the upper scaffolding of the stage, sometimes serving as the only motivation light source for the action. The lighting crew includes John Anselmo, production electrician, and Mack Woods, associate production electrician.
PRG provided the following gear:
27 ETC Lustr 2
13 ETC Gold
20 Martin MAC Aura
10 GLP x4 Bar 20
4 Astera Luna Bulbs
2 Ultratec Radiance Hazer
1 ETC Iom XE 20 console
Roderick was very thankful that PRG was generous with their support and told me, “I needed a plot that could accomplish all of it, and on a budget. One thing I’ve learned over the years, in doing a significant amount of commercial Off-Broadway work, is to keep the rig all LED. It may start the process at a bit of a premium price, but it saves money over the run of the show as the show requires much less maintenance. It also allows me to do a lot more with less and be able to support the diverse stylistic directions our show goes in!”
I can’t wait to see what Jamie Roderick does when this show moves on and up!