New Jersey arts and entertainment news, features and event previews.

It’s a common experience: You look at the gadget you just used — corkscrew, corkscrew, cup holder — and you say, “I wonder who thought of that?”

In ‘Joy: The Musical’, new plays are on stage George Street Theater, by December 30th, this gadget is the mop. Oh, and not just any mop, but one that wrings out without bending over.

It’s a “miracle mop” and it’s the real thing, invented by Joy Mangano and played here by a Broadway veteran Erica Henningsen.

“A lot of times,” the actress said in a phone chat, “in any entertainment medium, the stories are about Marie Curie or the work of the Wright Brothers, but very little about things we interact with every day. The thing is, you don’t have to be a genius to create something that changes people’s lives for the better. You don’t have to create the biggest thing in the world to have an impact. It may feel small, but it does to the people who use it. no.”

But “Joy: The Musical” and Ken Davenport’s book, with music and lyrics by Annmarie Milazzo, show that going from idea to million-dollar mop wasn’t easy for Mangano. She was eking out a living as a single mother, carrying all the burdens of a family that at first put her down on her inventive ambitions, then hit a snag that nearly broke her once she got her mop into production.

Henningson said the show’s portrayal of Mangano as a woman struggling with cultural expectations, the male-dominated business world and the legal system seemed to push her “back to the ground floor — the mother, the breadwinner. man, a man who tried to keep it all together”

Mangano triumphs in the end, and Miracle Mop is just one of her many accomplishments, but her story shows how easily dreams can be killed, and not just by forces other than the dreamer.

“More powerful forces can come from within ourselves,” Henningsen said. “‘How dare I have an idea, to think of something worthy of being in the world—even if it’s small?'”

She says the first step for a woman with an idea is to believe in herself, that she can turn her brainstorm into reality:

“But a lot of women are blocking themselves at the door, not allowing themselves a moment on the corporate board.”

The story of Mangano’s entry into the boardroom can be told in prose alone. In fact, she said it herself in her autobiography, Creating Joy. But Henningsen is excited to tell part of that story with lyrics written by Milazzo, who collaborated with Paul Scott Goodman on “A Walk on the Moon,” which concluded George Street’s season last spring.

Henningsen said she would like to see the audience in their seats lean forward to hear the words.

“They have to,” she said. “We don’t give the audience a chance to sit and have the lyrics ring in their ears. We do have some songs that are purely for entertainment, but some of the lyrics you can use as monologues and they feel very textual. They’re poetic, but They feel the way people talk. A lot of the story and the identities of the characters come into those songs.”

Henningsen has extensive song experience, including Broadway appearances as Fantine in Les Misérables and Cardi Herron in Mean Girls, as well as numerous local productions. She is also a philanthropist, teacher, and mentor, a path she embarked on at the University of Michigan as co-chair of a student organization that exposes public school students to the arts as a way to encourage self-expression and self-expression. way. Build self-esteem.Since then, she has undertaken many activities, including teaching sessions and leadership workshops for students in New York City with limited access to the arts, and helping to create a library for a school in Kenya.

The actress places special emphasis on introducing young people to the theater:

“When I think about the people who shaped me, it was my drama teacher, my vocal teacher. They helped me share my personality and tap into something deeper than I realized at my age.”

She points out that young people in the age of texts and TikTok are under pressure to understand and participate in what is happening in every moment.

“What I love about theater,” she says, “is that it’s a meditative experience. Nothing touches you. No one you have to text back. It gives students the opportunity to stand on stage for five minutes and just be there. There is an incredible amount of distraction and anxiety today. Art spaces are safe havens where they can get away from that part of the world. The more I work with them, the more I see how much they need that. ”

In some ways, this encouragement of self-expression evokes Joy Mangano’s struggle to have her ideas taken seriously—by her family, by the business world, by anyone. accept.

“We’re often told our ideas are stupid or not worth sharing,” Henningsen said. It’s easy to edit ourselves, have an idea and say, ‘That’s stupid. I won’t share it. I think it’s our responsibility to ourselves, to our children, to our students — to encourage the core of that idea. If we don’t, what’s the point of us being there? “

For more performance information or to purchase tickets, Click here.

For more information on Charles Paolino, visit his blog.