CUTTIN'
HEADS
THE CROSSROADS INFERNO - A NEW MUSICAL
ABOUT
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A barbershop at the edge of the crossroads. A guitar that still hums with hellfire. A boy chasing sound, a man haunted by it.
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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.
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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.
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Blues, gospel, rock, and spoken word collide with Southern folklore, Black barbershop culture, and the spiritual weight of legacy. All book and lyrics are original. The following tracks are concepts only envisioned through AI as development continues. AI is not condoned by the author and is only used to pitch this project to find the right creative collaboration team.
CHARACTERS
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JENNINE
"DOC" KRUEGER
BOOK & LYRICS
Jennine “DOC” Krueger is a mother, writer, artivist, public speaker, and educator in Austin, Texas. She has competed in world, national, and local slam poetry competitions. She holds four national titles and has now coached several national teams for Austin Poetry Slam and Austin Neo Soul. Her poetry and dramatic works have been published in Santa Fe Literary Review, and the Sierra Nevada Review as a winner in the Brian Turner Literary Arts Prize, and her dramatic work has won best of fest five times in Austin’s Frontera Festival. She was also recently named a Pushcart Prize nominee for her poetry published in Good River Review titled, Brown Girl at a Writing Retreat: A Case Study.
She has earned an M.Ed. from Concordia University and an MFA in poetry from Spalding University, and she is also an Emerging Teaching Artist Fellow through Mindpop and the City of Austin. She has over 20 years of teaching experience at both secondary and undergraduate levels as well as 20 plus years of public and motivational speaking around identity, positive thinking and mental health.
Her scholarship has led her to discuss culture and comics at the National Pop Culture Conference, Wizard World’s Comic Con, virtually in the 2020 SXSWEdu conference on Teaching for Social Justice with Comics, and The Cosplay Poetry Slam at SanJapan 2021 in San Antonio Texas. Her writing has a vast range across politics, race and identity as well as across genres with children’s literature and a hip-hop musical retelling of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (currently in development through Theatre Now New York’s National Musical Lab).
Her research interests are in spoken word performance, medieval literature translations into hip-hop, social and restorative justice, and marginalized heroes in comic books and graphic novels. She is represented by Tobias Literary Management and is currently shopping an anime screenplay pilot Ars Poetica (Best TV Script at Tokyo Screenplay Awards w/Brett Niethamer) that will focus on poetry and mental health. She is also developing several other new musicals: one about Doris Miller, a Black WWII hero, and another retelling the Salem Witch trials with an emphasis on the narrative from Tituba.
