Mystical Tether

About

presented as a part of the 2026 Prism Festival of New Queer Musicals Mystical Tether is an in-development concert experience led by Britton Smith and three musicians, offering audiences a first look into an emerging theatrical song cycle about the spiritual and ancestral bond between a Black queer man and his grandmother. After witnessing his grandmother's transition, a grandson is drawn into an ancestral journey that carries him back to the American South in 1948, where he encounters the family secrets, impossible choices, and forgotten love that shaped generations before him. To break a curse of silence, he must confront an ancient wound before it is inherited once again. The performance holds two sonic worlds at once: the haunting textures of Mississippi Southern Gothic folk and blues, and the pulse of Bushwick's underground dance clubs. Through original music, storytelling, and movement, these worlds collide to create a ritual of memory, grief, joy, and queer liberation. Developed with filmmaker Satchel Lee and informed by interviews with Black queer men about their relationships with their grandmothers, Mystical Tether invites audiences into the early evolution of a work honoring the sacred ties that shape who we become.