BSR_S10E14 - Wishing to Grow Up Brightly - Amanda Morton

In this conversation, Amanda Morton shares her personal journey of adoption and how it shapes her identity. She discusses the process of returning home to help her mother pack up childhood belongings after a loss, which leads to profound realizations about her past and the universal nature of such experiences.

WISHING TO GROW UP BRIGHTLY

Book by Amanda Morton, Matthew Decker & Brenson Thomas

Music by Josh Totora

Lyrics by Amanda Morton and Josh Totora

Directed by Matthew Decker

A bold new musical inspired by the real-life story of Amanda Morton (The Color Purple, Broadway’s Gutenberg! The Musical!, KPOP), co-created with longtime collaborator and Theatre Horizon co-founder Matthew Decker, alongside Josh Totora and Brenson Thomas. After the death of her father, Amanda Newton—a Korean-American adoptee—returns to her childhood home to help her mother pack up. There, she discovers a trove of his preserved memories, created by a tech company called reMemorex, and is pulled into a surreal and intimate journey through loss, identity, and the questions that have quietly shaped her life. As Amanda searches for connection in the fragments he left behind, she begins to confront a deeper longing: how do you create a sense of home when it was taken from you before you even knew what it was?

Wishing to Grow Up Brightly has been supported by The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage.

FOR MORE INFORMATION: https://theatrehorizon.org