For Immediate Release: December 2, 2025
Media Contact: Joshua Henry Jenkins | [email protected]
Theatre Communications Group to Publish Teeth, the Bold Musical Satire by Michael R. Jackson and Anna K. Jacobs
A ferocious, funny, and fearless examination of purity culture, misogyny, and survival, based on the cult classic film.
New York, NY – Theatre Communications Group (TCG) is proud to announce the forthcoming publication of Teeth, the darkly hilarious and incisive musical by Michael R. Jackson (Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award winner for A Strange Loop) and Anna K. Jacobs (Jonathan Larson and Billie Burke Ziegfeld Award–winning composer, lyricist, and book writer). Teeth will be published on December 9, 2025, and is available now for pre-order.
“Teeth is one of the most daring, imaginative, and wildly entertaining musicals of the past decade,” said Alisha Tonsic, Co-Executive Director of National Operations and Business Development at TCG. “Jackson and Jacobs' delicious use of humor, horror, and fearless wit to interrogate the systems that police bodies, weaponize shame, and reinforce patriarchal violence is a full-on pure delight. It's a juicy, exhilarating addition to the TCG catalog, and we're thrilled to bring it to readers in this form.”
Based on the 2007 cult classic film, Teeth follows Dawn O’Keefe, an Evangelical teen with a bizarre secret: two rows of gleaming white teeth perfectly placed to preserve her chastity. When the supposedly upright Christian men around her prove more interested in taking advantage of her body than in protecting it, they quickly learn to keep their hands (and other appendages) to themselves.
Critics have hailed Teeth as one of the most audacious musicals in recent memory:
“A brazen, unique, cackle-worthy slice of musical theater.” — Washington Post
“Unexpected, contrarian and maximalist…[Teeth] offers a winking subversiveness and plenty of laughs.” — New York Times
“A wild, fast-moving, gleeful ride…Who are the monsters in our society, and do we recognize them?” — Exeunt
Teeth premiered Off Broadway at Playwrights Horizons, opening on March 19, 2024. Directed by Sarah Benson with choreography by Raja Feather Kelly, the production was twice extended before closing. The show later transferred commercially to New World Stages, officially opening on October 31, 2024. The original Off Broadway cast recording was released digitally on July 12, 2024.
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Michael R. Jackson was one of Time magazine's 100 most influential people of 2022. His Pulitzer Prize– and New York Drama Critics’ Circle–winning A Strange Loop (which had its 2019 world premiere at Playwrights Horizons in association with Page 73 Productions) received 11 Tony nominations in 2022, and was called a full-on laparoscopy of the heart, soul, and loins as well as a gutsy, jubilantly anguished musical with infectious melodies by Ben Brantley for The New York Times. In addition to A Strange Loop, he also wrote book, music, and lyrics for White Girl in Danger, and the book and lyrics for Teeth, which opened at New World Stages in Fall 2024. Awards and associations include: a New Professional Theatre Festival Award, a Jonathan Larson Grant, a Lincoln Center Emerging Artist Award, an ASCAP Foundation Harold Adamson Lyric Award, a Whiting Award, the Helen Merrill Award for Playwriting, an Outer Critics Circle Award, a Drama Desk Award, an Obie Award, a Fred Ebb Award, a Windham-Campbell Prize, a Dramatist Guild Fellowship, and he is an alum of Page 73’s Interstate 73 Writers Group.
Anna K. Jacobs is a Jonathan Larson and Billie Burke Ziegfeld Award–winning composer, lyricist, and book writer. In collaboration with Michael R. Jackson, she wrote the music and co-wrote the book for the Drama Desk Award and Lucille Lortel–nominated musical Teeth, which Vulture hailed as a “bloody, bawdy musical with banging songs.” It ran off-Broadway at Playwrights Horizons and New World Stages, and an original cast recording has been released on Yellow Sound Label. Anna’s stage adaptation of Moana is in residence at the Walt Disney Theatre onboard the Disney Treasure. Her other musicals include POP! (Yale Rep, Pittsburgh City Theatre, Studio Theatre; CT Critics Circle Award, Best Production of a Musical), Anytown (George Street Playhouse), Harmony, Kansas (Diversionary Theatre; Craig Noel Award nomination, Outstanding New Musical and Outstanding New Score), and Witnesses (California Center for the Arts; Craig Noel Award, Outstanding New Musical). In collaboration with playwright Anna Ziegler, she is also writing A House Without Windows, a musical about the life and disappearance of child prodigy author Barbara Newhall Follett. Anna has taught musical theatre writing to students at Princeton, the New School, the New York Youth Symphony, and for the Johnny Mercer Foundation, and received her MFA in Musical Theatre Writing from NYU-Tisch. Originally from Sydney, Australia, she has called Brooklyn home since 2006.
PUBLICATION DETAILS
Teeth
by Michael R. Jackson and Anna K. Jacobs
120 pages | $17.95
Published by Theatre Communications Group
Publication Date: December 9, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-63670-245-2
Since its founding in 1984, TCG Books has grown to become North America’s largest independent trade publisher of dramatic literature, with 22 winners of the Pulitzer Prize for Drama on its book list. The book program commits to the life-long career of its playwrights, keeping all of their plays in print. TCG Books events are supported in part by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature.
Theatre Communications Group (TCG), the national organization for theatre, leads for a just and thriving theatre ecology. Since its founding in 1961, TCG’s constituency has grown from a handful of groundbreaking theatres to over 750 organizations (including member theatres, affiliates, universities) and over 3,000 individual members. Through its programs and services, TCG reaches over one million students, audience members, and theatre professionals each year. TCG offers networking and knowledge-building opportunities through research, communications, and events, including the biennial TCG National Conference, one of the largest nationwide gatherings of theatre people; awards grants and scholarships to theatre companies and individual artists; advocates on the federal level; and through the Global Theater Initiative, TCG's partnership with the Laboratory for Global Performance and Politics, serves as the U.S. Center of the International Theatre Institute. TCG is North America’s largest independent trade publisher of dramatic literature, with 21 Pulitzer Prizes for Drama on the TCG booklist. It also publishes the award-winning American Theatre magazine and ARTSEARCH®, the essential source for a career in the arts. TCG believes its vision of “a better world for theatre, and a better world because of theatre” can be achieved through individual and collective action, adaptive and responsive leadership, and equitable representation in all areas of practice. TCG is led by Emilya Cachapero, LaTeshia Ellerson and Alisha Tonsic. www.tcg.org.