Sizzle Stage & Screen: A Bold New Approach to Musical Theater Creation
Palm Springs could launch a fresh generation of original queer musicals for stage and screen.
Sizzle Stage & Screen is a public/private alliance of nonprofit theater and commercial media that develops a musical for three forms in tandem: a limited-run Broadway-caliber stage production, a broadcast-quality recording of that production, and an adult-animation movie musical. One creative process builds three core IP assets and multiple revenue streams.
One story. Three core assets. Multiple revenue streams. Exponential potential.
Our inaugural $2 million, two-year project (2027–2028) is Daze of Discovery—a provocative musical comedy set in Hawai‘i in 1779, when Captain Cook encounters the young Kamehameha. At its heart is aikāne, the Hawaiian tradition of intimate relationships between men. It brings a queer dimension to Kamehameha’s coming-of-age story as sexuality, mythology, and culture collide with the arriving Western world. A spunky haole cocktale, Daze draws on documented history and Hawaiian storytelling traditions while embracing its own irreverent invention.
Palm Springs is the ideal creative laboratory. Its nonprofit theaters, film community, philanthropists, entrepreneurs, audiences, and emerging technology offer the ingredients to build world-class productions. PS/NExT, the City- and Chamber-backed summit connecting AI, creativity, business, and community, could endorse Sizzle as a featured real-world proof-of-concept.
A recognizable star gives the project a marketing engine across the stage run, filmed performance, and animated feature. Nonprofit theater partners develop and produce the stage show; Sizzle and private investors finance the screen productions and commercial expansion. AI-assisted production compresses the timeline and extends the budget while all creative decisions are made by the artists and performers. The pipeline:
STAGE MUSICAL → FILMED PERFORMANCE → STREAMING → ANIMATED FEATURE → SOUNDTRACK → LICENSING
A cocky queer blend of history, myth, music, and mischief—created in Palm Springs for the world.
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THE MUSIC
CREATIVE TEAM
DAVID SECTER
BOOK AND LYRICS
David Secter is an award-winning writer/producer/director of film, theater and television. He has been living on the Big Island of Hawaii where he wrote the book and lyrics for the musical Daze Of Discovery - Heated Revelry in Old Hawaii. Secter’s movie Winter Kept Us Warm was the first Canadian feature selected for the Cannes Film Festival and is included in the book series Queer Film Classics. A 4K restoration is now distributed by Canadian International Pictures, streams on TCM, and the blu-ray edition includes the award-winning doc The Best of Secter and The Rest of Secter. His next movie The Offering was nominated as Canada’s best picture of the year and distributed by Columbia Pictures. Additional film credits include the indie comedy Getting Together, released by Troma as Feelin’ Up; Take The Flame, a gay games doc narrated by Greg Louganis; Pacific Passions about the Festival of Pacific Arts; BURN on Burning Man; and CyberDorm, an offbeat comedy about early webcasts.
During 10 years as CEO of EnterMedia, a Manhattan arts center in a historic 1100 seat playhouse, he produced and presented Obie award-winning plays and launched long-running Broadway musicals as The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas and Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. Secter also wrote the book and lyrics and produced the celebrated Off-Broadway musical Get Thee To Canterbury and created Banjos & Bugles, a civil war docudramusical. As a lifetime member of The Dramatists Guild, he plans to combine his love of theater and film with Sizzle Stage & Screen.
RUBEN ESTEVEZ
MUSIC
Ruben Estevez began playing piano and writing poetry at just five years old in his hometown of Houston, Texas — an early spark for storytelling that never faded. In 1995, he moved to Nashville to pursue songwriting in earnest, landing a publishing deal with Word Records and a string of Contemporary Christian Music cuts along the way.
In the Country genre, Ruben's song "Lie" won the Grand Prize at The Music City Songwriter competition. In summer 2013, it was recorded by Tracy Lawrence for his album Headlights, Taillights and Radios, releasing as his third single in February 2014.
In early 2019, a trip to New York City sparked something new: the desire to tell a bigger, more personal story. Ruben set out to write his first full-length musical, drawing on his own experience growing up gay in 1970s and '80s Texas. A year later, he'd completed Marcos, writing the music, lyrics, and libretto himself.
That project marked a turning point, and Ruben hasn't slowed down since. He went on to write HAUNT, about a young woman who moves into a new home only to discover it's haunted, and Plane Jane, a musical comedy following a flight attendant whose life is forever changed by one fateful flight. Most recently, he collaborated with David on Daze of Discovery, composing the score for David's script. From Music Row to the stage, Ruben keeps bringing the same honest, playful craft to every story he tells.
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