Audible Theater Brings Award-Winning ‘Dead Outlaw’ to Life on Broadway

One night in 2023, some members of the Audible Theater team went to the Manhattan venue 54 Below and saw the spark of something great. Tony Award-winning composer David Yazbek (The Band’s Visit) and his writing partner Erik Della Penna were there performing a cycle of songs from a musical in progress, a quirky dark comedy based on the true story of a bumbling outlaw whose body became a traveling sideshow in the early 20th century. Yazbek confessed he didn’t fully know what the show was yet, but the Audible Theater team decided to commission it for development anyway.

Yazbek reunited with his Band’s Visit director David Cromer and writer Itamar Moses to workshop what would become Dead Outlaw, which premiered at Audible’s Minetta Lane Theatre in New York City in 2024. Following its acclaimed Off-Broadway run and multiple award wins, including the 2024 Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Musical, on April 27, Dead Outlaw made its Broadway debut to rave reviews at the Longacre Theatre. The show will also be released as an Audible Original later this year, furthering its reach to millions of listeners across the globe.

It was a remarkably fast turnaround from in-progress cabaret to Broadway show. “New musicals generally take six years to develop and produce, which can keep writers going around in circles on their script,” explains Kate Navin, Audible’s Head of Creative Development for North America. Navin has a great instinct for the artists to bet on, developed over 12 years of working as a theatrical agent representing directors and playwrights. Then one day in 2017, Audible asked for a meeting. That’s when she “heard the best pitch I could ever get.”

“We think theater artists are fantastic, that their voices would work really well in audio, and we think they’re underemployed,” Navin recalls hearing. “Those were all statements I agreed with, and I was told to ‘dream up’ what we should do, which was really thrilling.” In 2018, she helped to launch Audible Theater and the Emerging Playwrights Fund. “We needed a pipeline of original projects, and we wanted to employ artists and give them a bigger audience, so hiring writers made sense right away,” Navin explains.

At the same time, she met with producers to explore what Audible could offer to theater, explaining that Audible’s founder Don Katz didn’t want to be competition, but rather “additive.” To help make the case, Navin leaned on two points: “Playwrights know how to create story through dialogue better than any other writer,” she says, “and Audible has a platform of listeners looking to engage with lots of different kinds of audio entertainment. We have that audience, and you make great work. Let’s do it together.”

Recognizing that it would be easier if Audible had a dedicated space for live productions, Navin secured a deal with the Minetta Lane Theatre, a beloved venue in Greenwich Village. Our first production there was David Cale’s Harry Clarke, starring Billy Crudup, followed by an intimate evening with legendary musician and poet Patti Smith—an event that effectively launched our Words + Music series.

Since then, we’ve produced more than 40 live performances at Minetta Lane, which are also released as Audible Originals and made available to listeners all over the world, making good on Audible’s promise to expand audiences for artists. Some of the titles are recorded live at the theater, for example, Alan Cumming’s Legal Immigrant and Michael Cruz Kayne’s Sorry for Your Loss, where the audience’s laughter and reactions are a critical part of the show. Others, like drama and solo performances, are best recorded in Audible’s studios.

When Covid-19 shuttered theaters and threatened the livelihoods of performers, directors, playwrights and stage crews everywhere, Navin’s team was able to commission and produce plays in audio, keeping writers and actors working remotely. “Financially, everyone is living show to show,” Navin says, adding that it was “so meaningful” to be able to offer that relief to artists in her industry. “This is something I think Audible does best: you’re empowered to say ‘yes’ to the big ideas and figure out the rest later.”

In May, Navin and Audible Theater will be accepting the Drama League’s Contribution to the Theatre Award in recognition of Audible’s unwavering commitment to advancing American theater through our many commissioned plays and musicals. The Emerging Playwrights Fund has commissioned and produced 50 works from writers around the world, and Audible Theater has produced more than 120 audio titles featuring luminaries such as Carey Mulligan, Daniel Dae Kim, and Navin’s former client, Colman Domingo. Audible Theater has also received 60 nominations and 14 wins across the theater and audio awards landscape.

As Navin celebrates the opening night of Dead Outlaw on Broadway, she contemplates the meaningfulness of the Drama League’s award. “It’s a reflection of everybody who has worked on Audible Theater over the years—legal, dealmaking, marketing and PR, and past and present team members. It tells me that we were successful in bringing value to the industry that I love so much.”