<p>Molly Sturges has collaborated with Acushla Bastible and Luis Guerra on past projects and has been actively developing COAL for months with all of the collaborators mentioned in this proposal. Bastible forged a close relationship with Georgina Escobar while directing Excobar's play, The Ruin, and invited Escobar to join the COAL creative team in March 2012 when it became clear that the project needed a playwright skilled in writing fantasy, fable, and myth.</p> <p><br />Sturges and Guerra started musical sketches for COAL in the fall of 2010 and have since been engaged in an in-depth process of songwriting, music production and re-drafting. Sturges and Bastible are collaborators and co-directors on Lifesongs, a project started by Sturges and The Santa Fe Opera/Littleglobe, and have worked on many other performance projects together through Littleglobe and The Santa Fe Opera.</p>