El Sidd & The Healers is a genre-defying rock opera that reimagines Siddhartha for the late 1960s — blending psychedelic counterculture with a powerful narrative of personal transformation. With original music drawing from rock, funk, jazz, and ceremonial traditions, the show charts the journey of a Midwestern teen who flees his authoritarian upbringing in search of spiritual truth.
Set against the backdrop of 1969 California and Mexico, Sidd’s odyssey leads him from a dangerous encounter with Charles Manson’s commune to the seductive underworld of a Tijuana burlesque club. There, he meets Persephone, a brilliant survivor who challenges his quest for purity with street wisdom and hard-earned insight. Together, they invent a healing act for tourists — equal parts scam and sincere — before betrayal, madness, and a descent into the desert force Sidd to face himself and reimagine what healing really means.
Twenty years later, Sidd lives as a quiet healer in the California desert, until a mysterious young woman — possibly his daughter — reignites his journey.
A story of seekers and con artists, true believers and charismatic liars, El Sidd & The Healers speaks to contemporary themes of identity, consent, inherited trauma, and the longing for connection — all through a lens that’s poetic, provocative, and ultimately uplifting.
Hear Songs from El Sidd and the Healers
Book, lyrics, and music by Joseph Martin Waters
Director – Desha Crownover
Music Director – Richard Duñez Morrison
A joint production of NWEAMO and Composers Concordance – part of the 13th Annual CompCord Festival