Joe Ortiz's musical memoir, Escaping Queens, takes place in the shadow of the Queensboro Bridge. This funny, edgy, ultimately hopeful story, centers around an Italian/Puerto Rican family trying to escape the chaos and poverty of New York housing-project life. Mama rules the home with a nurturing wooden spoon but cannot control her charismatic, gambling husband. Sooner or later something has to give—and it does. The production’s original music draws on the same richness of traditions that the family itself does: Latin beats, Sicilian ballads, do-wop numbers on the street corner and radio hits reminiscent of 1950s era New York.

Escaping Queens originally premiered at Cabrillo Stage, a professional regional musical theatre company in Northern California, in 2012. The show was a sell-out, and so successful with audiences that Cabrillo Stage brought it back for an encore in their 2013 season. In the fall of 2014, Escaping Queens was featured in a two-performance concert reading at the Queens Theater, in Corona Park, N.Y.  It has gone to be performed in various locales including The Shelton Theater in San Francisco, Hillbarn Theater in Foster City, and presented in New York City as part of the Dream Up Festival.