Berklee Theater Arts Collaborative and Staged Reading Ensemble Present Animal Spirits

The Staged Reading Ensemble and Berklee Theater Arts Collaborative (BTAC) present a staged reading of Animal Spirits, a new musical by David Thorne Scott. Animal Spirits tells the story of economist John Maynard Keynes, whose groundbreaking theories transformed the 20th century. Young Keynes and his brilliant bohemian friends, including Virginia Woolf, Vanessa Bell, Lytton Strachey, and Duncan Grant, lived lives of wild parties, polyamorous intrigue, and passionate debates about art, love, and—after their friends started dying in World War I—politics. 

Keynes wrote a devastating critique of the leaders of the Allies which established him as a public intellectual. Then he employed his skills as an economist to advise governments and amass wealth, which he used to support struggling artists. He was bisexual, and spent much of his life in romantic relationships with men until he fell in love with and married the dazzling ballerina Lydia Lopokova. He predicted the rise of fascism in Germany and was scarred by personal tragedy caused by World War II. For his final act, he negotiated a new system of international rules that prevented the rise of a third world war and spread prosperity. 

In the end, did he hold fast to his deepest principles, or did he betray them?