Nellie Bly
   by Glen Berger and      
     Lawrence Joseph Glatt

The Play

Nellie Bly was a groundbreaking investigative journalist in late 1890’s and early 20th century.  Leaving her native Pittsburgh, she traveled to New York to become Joseph Pulitzer’s star, “girl reporter.” After exposing corruption in the Mexican government, she became an international star over night for her expose on abusive treatment at the Blackwell Island Mental Asylum in New York City.  In her career she traveled from the Klondike Goldrush at Dawson City to the front lines of World War One.  Nellie Bly reached the apex of her fame for her round-the-world trip that she took for the Pulitzer papers in which she tried to out-travel the protagonist in Jules Vernes’ Around the World in Eighty Days.  She made it in 72.

Nellie Bly is a one-hour musical with music through-out.  In the show we follow her journey from her childhood in Pittsburgh to her greatest successes.   Her irrepressible, bull-in-the-china-shop persona is the key to her success but it is also the source of some of her greatest challenges as her aggressive manor rubbed some people the wrong way.  We see her swing from the greatest heights to the deepest depths as she meets Joseph Pulitzer, Emma Goldman and Susan B. Anthoney while dealing with disappointment and personal tragedy.  In end, Nellie must learn how to drag herself out of depression to regain her place in the world, making the world a better place.  

Nellie Bly had its premiere in the Hudson Valley in 2017 and it’s second production in Atlanta in 2019.