Bisland & Bly

Lyrics by Marialena DiFabbio & Susannah Jones

Music by Marialena DiFabbio

Book & Additional Music by Susannah Jones

Bisland & Bly is about real-life journalists Nellie Bly and Elizabeth Bisland who raced each other in opposite directions around the world in 1889, beating the fictional record from “Around The World In Eighty Days.” Elizabeth and Nellie were radically different—one a daughter of industrial Pittsburgh with a passion for righting the world’s wrongs, the other a southern belle with a flair for prose and cultural insight. However, both were forced to defend their value in a world that had little patience for women who dared to persist in the pursuit of their own dreams.

Bisland & Bly has been developed at the Redhouse Arts Center, Weston Playhouse Artists Retreat, NYMF, and the Springworks Festival in Stratford, CA. The show is a 2019 and 2020 O’Neill Musical Theater Conference Semi-Finalist, and Susannah and Marialena are Jonathan Larson Grant Finalists.

The musical is inspired by the book Eighty Days by Matthew Goodman.

Album Features: Lizzie Hagstedt (Florence and Ensemble vocals, upright bass), Timothy Hassler (ensemble vocals, fiddle), Marialena DiFabbio (Nellie Bly vocals, guitar, ukulele), Susannah Jones (Elizabeth Bisland vocals), Ben Quinn (Jules Verne & Ensemble Vocals, guitar, mandolin), Titus Tompkins (Cyclone Bill, James Metcalfe, & Ensemble vocals, percussion).