Broadway has always told the immigrant story, from Fiddler on the Roof to Ragtime to In the Heights. Nasha America is the next chapter, about a family that arrives in the late 1980s with two suitcases each, trades respected careers for manual work, and raises a son who bets everything on the internet the year Lehman Bros falls.
It’s the story of refugees, entrepreneurs, and dreamers who came after Ellis Island, and of the children who grew up translating for their parents before going on to build what comes next.
Nasha means “our.” Every family from every corner of the world that has ever come to America has a different word for it. The “America” is always the same.
Our Hands
A four-minute film built around Babushka Inna’s song. The Kelvanovs arrive in Little Odessa in the late 1980s, trade respected careers for manual work, and hold onto one idea: we build our future by working with our hands.
It recreates a Brighton Beach that has since faded, directed frame by frame for emotional truth rather than spectacle, and screened for friends and family until the room reliably wept.
3
Telly AwardsPlus Best Super Short Film at the Florence Film Awards, and official selection at ten festivals from Paris and London to Stockholm and Milan.
“How do you say hello before you’ve said goodbye?”
From “Learn to Fly,” sung as the family leaves Kyiv
Still from the film Our Hands
Who do you become when you lose almost everything?
Kyiv, 1987. In the shadow of Chernobyl, a Jewish family leaves everything behind and starts over in Brighton Beach with their hands: a café by the boardwalk, a car service, a new language. Twenty years later they have lost Mila, the daughter meant to carry them all. The café is drowning in debt, and the local loan shark is circling.
Yasha, the son his father has written off as a bezdelnik, a good-for-nothing, is the last person anyone expects to save them. A self-taught coder with a dream bigger than Brighton Beach, he bets that the internet can rescue the family café, and that he can finally become the son they need.
What can pull them through isn’t a windfall. It’s each other.Nasha America is the story of a family learning to rise after loss, and of a son discovering who he becomes when his family needs him most.
HopeReinventionPerseverance
Nasha America is unlike any musical I have encountered … beautiful, harrowing, complex.
Darko TresnjakBroadway director of A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder and Anastasia
Hear it live
Dangerous Love
Wendy offers Yasha hope, and a warning. Bryonha Marie performs from a concert presentation of the show.
Nine years of readings, workshops and concerts in New York, developed with creative talent from shows such as:
HamiltonDear Evan HansenThe Band’s VisitCabaretMotown The MusicalSuffsTootsie
The readingThe rehearsal roomThe concert
2017Born in a two-week incubator at the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music.
2018–19Early development in New York through readings and workshops of the full show.
2020–21Research inside both worlds: Soviet émigrés in Brighton Beach and startup founders.
2022UWS concert and 29-hour reading in Union Square.
2023Selected for the NAMT Festival of New Musicals, with Andrea Grody joining the team as music director.
2025New York City workshop, with Danny Sharron joining the team as director.
2027Full production, August–September.
Chosen for the NAMT Festival
In October 2023 the show, then titled Fallout, was one of 8 new musicals chosen from roughly 600 for the National Alliance for Musical Theatre’s Festival of New Musicals, performed for producers and theatres from across the country.
The festival company
Nathan Salstone
Ashley Brown
Eddie Korbich
Anne L. Nathan
Bryonha Marie
Cailen Fu
Samantha Massell
Jim Stanek
Emily Fink
Ari Axelrod
Directed by Dev Bondarin. Music direction by Andrea Grody.
Dmitry, Andrea and David at NAMT
The creative team
Tony-winning shows, a Telly-winning film and forty years of Broadway between them. Select a name to read more.
Produced by The Bridge Incubator
bridgemusicals.com
A development company for original musicals, working directly with artists to take shows from the middle of development to the stage, with dramaturgy, workshops, concerts and retreats along the way.
Molly MarinikFounder and Producing Artistic Director; the show’s dramaturg through development
Jenna ReadyGeneral Manager
Laura BeenCreative Strategy
The Kelvanovs, and the people who change them
A Brighton Beach family holding on after loss, and the strangers who walk into their café and change what comes next.
The family
YashaThe son
A dreamer and coder who has to become the family’s general.
MilaThe daughter
The family’s heart and first college graduate. Gone, and never quite gone.
ReginaThe mother
The legend of Brighton Beach, a singer who stopped singing.
AleksandrThe father
A Kyiv physics professor, now driving a car service in Brooklyn.
VadimThe uncle
Café owner and the original believer in “Nasha America.”
The people who change them
Babushka InnaThe grandmother
Pelmeni, The Golden Girls, and the truths nobody else will say.
JackieThe busker
Chinese-born, Texas-raised, Jewish. Mila paid for her record.
WendyThe co-founder
Lehman VP, ex-founder, Yasha’s partner and conscience.
TaelyrThe mentor
Founder of Summit Lab. One in twenty survive.
BilolThe neighbor
“Billy.” The next family to arrive on the boardwalk.
Nasha America, I’m coming home.
Coming August – September 2027 South Orange Performing Arts Center, New Jersey
