FRESNO, Calif. (KSEE/KGPE) - Ke'Lea Flowers says her caller philharmonic “Dysfunction,” opening successful April astatine the Selma Arts Center, has been much than 10 years successful the making — a emotion missive to her younger self, her loved ones, and a testament to everyone who doubted she could bash it.
While not strictly autobiographical, Flowers describes it arsenic "painted with the colour instrumentality of my beingness experiences."
"I grew up successful a dysfunctional home. It's not thing that I'm ashamed of talking about," Flowers said.
Flowers says her emotion for musicals began early, and by the property of six, she was already penning songs.
"I've been obsessed with philharmonic theatre my full life, but I truly got into it erstwhile I was successful precocious school," Flowers said. "There was really a truly mean miss successful precocious schoolhouse who was like, 'You can't bash that.'"
Flowers says the aboriginal negativity successful her beingness affected her for years, creating harmful thought patterns successful her puerility that her big aforesaid would person to larn to fix.
"I would archer myself, 'You're lazy, you're not beardown enough, radical are going to find out,'" Flowers said. "Lately, I situation it by going, 'Who said that to you?'"
Flowers says that aft spending clip confronting her interior monologue, she tin present pinpoint the radical who archetypal enactment her down - and tin present basal up for herself amended than ever before.
"I tin virtually go, 'That is what my stepdad said to me, due to the fact that helium was not a bully person, and helium broke my spirit,'" Flowers said. "I'm successful power now, and that's not true. So we're not going to accidental these mean things to ourselves."
She says "Dysfunction" invites audiences to spot themselves connected signifier and recognize they’re not unsocial oregon "dysfunctional."
"I made this unsocial successful my closet - each the demos of the songs. In a way, it's similar I'm penning however unsocial I've felt my full life, and past each these radical are like, 'Me too,'" Flowers said. "There's nary imaginable mode I'm alone, and that is what I anticipation radical consciousness erstwhile they spot the show."
Flowers says she feels anyone with an unfastened caput has the imaginable to spot themselves, oregon idiosyncratic they love, represented connected signifier - and there's thing undeniably large astir that.
"I deliberation there's a information that I consciousness sometimes successful not dreaming big," Flowers said. "But, I said, 'I'm going to marque this musical, I'm going to transportation this for Selma, and it's going to get successful the Selma Arts Center,' and it did. So, it's going to beryllium connected Broadway. I'm saying it."
You tin acquisition tickets to ticker "Dysfunction," astatine the Selma Arts Center here.