CUTTIN'
HEADS
THE CROSSROADS INFERNO - A NEW MUSICAL
ABOUT
A barbershop at the edge of the crossroads. A guitar that still hums with hellfire. A boy chasing sound, a man haunted by it.
Cuttin' Heads: The Crossroads Inferno is a new original musical that fuses the mythic crossroads legend of Delta bluesman Robert Johnson with the timeless architecture of Dante’s Inferno. Set in a Southern Black barbershop, part sanctuary, part storytelling chamber; the musical follows Robert Johnson as he embarks on a journey through a surreal underworld to reclaim his sound, his soul, and his legacy.
As Robert navigates the nine circles of a musical hellscape, he’s guided by Miss Bess, a no-nonsense blues queen rooted in the spirit of Bessie Smith. In the living world, a young boy named Plug watches and listens, slowly absorbing the rhythm of rebellion, artistry, and transformation that flows through the clippers, chords, and chaos of the barbershop.
A preview Told in Rhythm and Flame
At its core, Cuttin' Heads is a journey of voice: who gets to shape it, who tries to silence it, and how it echoes through generations. From whispered prayers to shouted gospel, from bottleneck slide to electric distortion, the music of this show carries the tension of tradition and change.
Blues, gospel, rock, and spoken word collide with Southern folklore, Black barbershop culture, and the spiritual weight of legacy.
CHARACTERS
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JENNINE
"DOC" KRUEGER
ALTON
JAMES
BOOK & LYRICS
COMPOSER
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Jennine “DOC” Krueger is a mother, writer, musical-theatre creator, poet-lyricist, artivist, public speaker, and educator based in Atlanta, Georgia, where she is pursuing an MFA in Film and Television at the Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD).
She is a 2026 National Fellow with the Dramatist Guild Foundation, and also a current Theatre Now New York Musical Development Lab Member. Her work blends hip-hop, history, folklore, and social justice into bold, genre-bending musical storytelling that puts marginalized voices front and center, where they belong.
Her hip-hop musical Green, a remix of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight filtered through Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, is currently in development with Theatre Now New York’s National Musical Development Lab. She is also developing new musicals centered on Doris Miller, a Black WWII hero, and a reframed Salem Witch Trials story told from the perspective of Tituba. Her current musical focus, Cuttin’ Heads, is a blues-soaked, 1930s barbershop musical rooted in the legend of Robert Johnson at the crossroads, harmonizing urban folklore with a descent worthy of Dante himself.
Poetry is her first language and primary medium.
A nationally recognized poet, Jennine has earned multiple slam titles, coached national teams, and mentored writers in performance and dramatic storytelling. Her dramatic work has won Best of Fest five times at FronteraFest in Austin, and she was previously nominated for a Pushcart Prize in Good River Review. Her anime screenplay pilot Ars Poetica, a poetry-powered exploration of mental health, won Best TV Pilot at the Tokyo Screenwriting Festival.
Her filmography explores mental health, where she writes, directs and enjoys the creative process around pitching and development, creative producing, wardrobe and set design.
An HBCU alumna of Huston-Tillotson University, Jennine holds an M.Ed. from Concordia University and an MFA in Poetry from Spalding University.
Alton James, Ph.D., MBA, is a composer, multi-instrumentalist, vocalist, producer, and interdisciplinary sound artist whose work explores the places where music, story, memory, and human experience converge. He is currently serving as composer for an original theatrical work by playwright Jennine Krueger. Through original works and premieres, James approaches music not merely as accompaniment, but as a dramatic language—one capable of illuminating the inner lives of characters, carrying what words leave unspoken, and shaping the emotional architecture of a story.
His creative practice spans theater, television, film, games, and recorded music, encompassing the full production and post-production process. His work includes composition, arranging, recording, music production, editing, mixing, mastering, Foley, sound design, and immersive audio. Working from his 9.1.6 Dolby Atmos studio, James creates dimensional sonic environments in which music, dialogue, movement, silence, and atmosphere become part of a unified narrative experience. His background as a pianist, keyboardist, vocalist, and multi-instrumentalist informs the harmonic and emotional character of his compositions. At the same time, his technical experience allows him to carry an artistic vision from its earliest musical idea through its final immersive presentation.
James’s artistry is further shaped by his work as an educator, scholar, and higher-education leader. His academic foundations in English, music, history, education, public policy, business, technology, and organizational leadership deepen his sensitivity to language, culture, character, and the social worlds from which stories emerge. These disciplines do not exist separately within his practice; they continually inform one another, joining imagination with inquiry, musicianship with technology, and emotional intuition with intellectual rigor. Across every medium, James seeks to create work that is sonically evocative, narratively purposeful, and attentive to the full humanity of the people whose stories it carries.
