Songs for a New World is a work of musical theater written and composed by Jason Robert Brown. Its original off-Broadway production ran for 28 performances at the WPA Theater in New York City in 1995. The show sits on the boundary between musical and song cycle: it is a series of largely disjoint songs with (unlike a musical) no plot or characters that continue from song to song, but the songs and production themselves are highly theatrical and character-driven.
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The original cast consisted of Brooks Ashmanskas, Andrea Burns, Jessica Molaskey, and Billy Porter (Porter's part was sung by Ty Taylor on the original cast recording). Songs for a New World was Jason Robert Brown's first produced show; he went on to write Parade, a musical based on the tragedy of Leo Frank, and The Last Five Years, a two-person musical about a failed relationship.
The music of Songs for a New World is heavily influenced by a broad range of genres, including pop, gospel, jazz and classical music, making the work an example of musical pastiche. Many of the songs combine elements of two or more of these genres.
