“Oh My Goddess” (OMG) is a musical that is a work in progress — much like its creator, Christine Hauer.
“I’m enjoying finding out who I am,” Hauer muses. One thing that the actress/model/comedian/poet/
The piece of musical theatre — “a rock-and-disco rendition of the famed Cupid and Psyche myth” — that she presented and starred in at the Lower East Side’s Slipper Room for the first time on Oct. 18 is a “mini version” of a show that she envisions as a much larger production.
“My most wildest dream is to perform OMG on Broadway!” she admits.
Hauer grew up in “the cocoon of small town life in South Carolina” but saw the future at age 11, when she attended “Cats” at the Winter Garden Theatre.
“I knew then that New York was where I wanted to be,” she recounts.
Hauer had performed with her band Cake Tower, but her first stab at theatrical life onstage was a one-woman show titled “A Christine Carol,” which she describes as “like ‘A Muppet Christmas Carol,’ only I play Michael Caine, and Kermit and both Marleys and Bunny and all the ghosts are also me.”
COVID-19 cancelled that initial run (although it did get filmed and then produced at the New York Theatre Festival last summer), and Hauer ended up back home with her parents, taking piano lessons and writing songs.
“I wrote OMG in two weeks,” she recalls. “I had ended a year-long relationship that I had lost myself in. It was a love that was all-consuming and I had never had that before — I lost who I was as a person. I went through a lot of trauma. What I didn’t realize was … I was dating Satan”.
Which probably explains why the main character in OMG — Venus, the goddess of love — is cast as a villain.
“I love the Venus character,” Hauer says. “She’s a villain but also very funny.”
Joining Hauer onstage are Kyla Ernst-Alper (Psyche), Anna Tyler (Bellacci) and a live band: Christian Nourijanian (piano), Dustin Kaufman (drums) and Tim Bason (guitar).
Ernst-Alper, an aerialist burlesque artist, served as co-producer and, Hauer notes, “helped to choreograph Psyche, bringing life to a character that I had never had anyone embody. I’m forever grateful to her for being a part of this first show.”
Matt Ritchey is also credited with “helping with the script and story crafting.”
Hauer plans to present the play again at the same venue in the new year, but she is also looking to connect with other spaces and possibly reaching out to women’s educational groups. “The play is very much about women and supporting that need for love and fulfillment and connection. It’s initially about two women competing with each other, but in the end they realize that there’s room for both of their powers.”
Hauer’s choice of characters was not careless — she’s spent some time thinking about the state of the universe.
“Magic really exists,” she says. “I mean, think about laughing. We’re molecules spinning on a rock in space, and yet we can laugh! … I love life, I love joy and fun and playing. My calling in this lifetime is to inspire authenticity in others and myself, being a part of existence and leveling up to the next version of whoever we are as people.”
More info about everything can be found at christinehauer.com and you can follow her instagram at @christinehaueryou
