On April 27, Dead Outlaw, the very first musical commissioned and co-produced by Audible, is premiering on Broadway. Just two years ago, the show was still an in-progress project, the brainchild of Tony Award winner David Yazbek (The Band’s Visit) and his writing partner Erik Della Penna. Even though they didn’t know exactly what the show was yet, the duo decided to showcase the songs at a Manhattan cabaret. Some members of the Audible Theater team were there that night, including Kailee Ayyar, who went back to her manager, (then-head of Audible Theater) Kate Navin, and said, “There’s definitely something there.” 

The songs were all around the bizarre true story of a bumbling outlaw whose mummified body became part of a traveling sideshow in the early 20^th century. Kailee felt the narrative structure would work well in audio, “with a central narrator telling this sort of campfire story—and the songs are very catchy.” The team decided to commission Dead Outlaw as Audible's first original musical, and helped workshop and develop it, reuniting the creators with their Band’s Visit director David Cromer and book writer Itamar Moses. The following year, the show premiered Off-Broadway at the Minetta Lane Theater, winning multiple awards during its run, including the 2024 Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Musical. And now it’s Broadway-bound.

“It’s a huge accomplishment for the team and for Audible, and for me, personally and professionally,” says Kailee, whose keen eye for potential was honed over several years working in theater development. Originally from the Bay Area, she came to New York to study acting at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, but after graduating, Kailee found that the roles she was asked to audition for tended to be very restrictive. “I was frustrated by the lack of opportunities for women and people of color,” she says. She was offered an internship at the Sundance Institute Theater Lab to help develop new work from emerging writers. “It lit something inside of me, and I got onto the track of developing and producing original theater,” she says.

Eventually Kailee managed artistic development at a leading Off-Broadway theater, where she helped to create more inclusive roles, opportunities and works, “a driving force in my career,” she says. In March 2020, Kailee was looking for her next step when an opportunity arose to bring her mission to Audible Theater. At the time, Covid-19 was shuttering theaters and threatening the livelihoods of performers, directors, playwrights and stage crews everywhere. Fortunately the Audible Theater team was able to commission and produce plays in audio, keeping writers and actors working remotely. Kailee, too, started as a remote contractor, at first working on the post-production side of titles such as Dan Rather: Stories of a Lifetime and Brutal Imagination.

When the Minetta Lane Theater was finally able to re-open, “it was really moving for everyone to gather in the space again,” Kailee reports. “I think people really needed it.” The first production in the re-opened space was And So We Walked, a play by a Cherokee creator about her and her father’s 900-mile journey along the Trail of Tears. “I’m always trying to champion women and people of color and give them a platform,” says Kailee. She’s commissioned and produced Audible Originals such as Gospel of a Diva with Alex Newell (Glee), You are Here: An Evening with Solea Pfeiffer, and Laura Benanti’s Nobody Cares. Also, she points out, “At the Minetta Lane Theater, we have an opportunity to hire designers, stage managers and directors, and I advocate for a diverse room that’s representative of New York City and the global population as much as possible.”

With the huge achievement of Dead Outlaw going to Broadway, Kailee was ready for her next challenge, and Audible was forming a team focused on commissioning and developing Audible Originals for production. As Associate Director of Creative Development, Kailee is excited about creating even more opportunities for performers and playwrights, with commissions across a wide range of genres, like romances, comedies, dramas and more. She points out that playwrights are versatile and well suited for audio-first storytelling, since “they are especially good at writing dialogue,” and can branch out beyond writing only for live performance.

It's that kind of flexibility and openness that led Kailee to this point in her career. “I never dreamed I’d be one day producing, let alone audio producing. This medium only became an option as I was coming up. One of the things I like about Audible is I’m always working on projects that let me grow, and in ways I never imagined.”