“Like Father,” a new musical written by Jacob Ryan Smith and Caroline Pernick, is having its world premiere at the Alliance Theatre on Oct. 8. And this musical has a special Atlanta connection.
Smith hails from Atlanta, as does producer Madison Thompson, best known for her acting roles on shows like “Ozark” and “Euphoria.” Smith and Thompson ran in similar circles growing up, said Smith, but didn’t officially meet until Thompson visited a mutual friend of theirs at Smith’s alma mater, the University of Michigan. They immediately hit it off.
“We made a plan to grab a quick dinner,” Smith remembered. “Let’s set a face to the name, let’s actually get to know each other. And it was basically love at first sight.”
The story behind how “Like Father,” which runs through Nov. 15, came to be is full of clandestine connections. In addition to Smith and Thompson’s hometown connection and fateful dinner, Smith met his writing partner Pernick in New York City after they matched on the dating app Tinder. Pernick said that when she initially matched with Smith, she was scheming (“Not to diminish Jake’s dashing good looks,” she added). She recognized Smith from his Instagram, The Song Smith, a year-long project where he wrote and produced a new song every day for an entire year. She thought he would be a good person to get to know – although in what capacity, she wasn’t yet sure.
The two finally met when Smith went to see Pernick perform one night. They hung out twice after that initial meeting, and instantaneously felt not a romantic connection, but a friendly and creative one – one that led to Smith telling Pernick about an idea he had for a musical, and asking her if she wanted in.
The true crime of it all
That musical is “Like Father,” which is set in Dahlonega, Georgia, and follows Chris (Sophie Pollono), a 17-year-old girl who moves in with her estranged mother (Hannah Elless) and her step-father (Benjamin H. Moore) after her father is arrested for being a serial killer. When a true crime podcast exposes her family’s history to the world, it forces Chris to reckon with the truth.
By the time he asked Pernick to partner up, Smith had been sitting on the idea for a while. The idea came one night during the COVID-19 lockdown while watching a documentary with his father about the serial killer John Wayne Gacy. During the lockdown, true crime had become something of a comfort for Smith. But the more he fell asleep listening to stories about mass murderers and kidnappings, the more he began to wonder if finding comfort in something so dark was normal.
Turns out, it is. True crime – whether it be podcasts, books, or documentaries – is a “multi-billion dollar industry,” according to a Forbes piece from 2025 about the genre’s popularity. But knowing that didn’t answer any of the questions running through Smith’s head.
“I’m not unique,” he remembered thinking. “But there’s something wrong here, right?”
In the Gacy documentary, Smith was drawn to a section where Gacy’s daughter talked about how his arrest had affected her life. It got Smith thinking about his relationship with his own father. Over the course of the lockdown, he’d begun to get to know him as a friend rather than a parent – how would he react if he found out something so devastating about someone he loved so much?
Pernick’s relationship to true crime is similar to Smith’s, but differs in a few ways. She loved the first season of the podcast “Serial,” but as she tried to engage with other stories, she found it difficult to stay in for the long haul, struggling with the more exploitative aspects of the genre.
“I’d be like, this is intriguing, but also something feels really weird in my body,” she said. “I know this actually doesn’t make me feel good, even though I’m entertained by it.”
Thompson comes at the genre from a completely different perspective, in that she’s always been terrified of true crime and doesn’t like to engage. But she thought something about “Like Father” extended past the true crime of it all into a more human experience – one that might help explain why the genre is so popular in the first place. Everyone is curious about other people’s lives, and everyone likes to feel safe in their own.
“Like Father” sits at an interesting intersection. It’s a coming-of-age story that also aims to critique the sensationalism and exploitative nature of true crime, such as the way the genre repackages real violence and trauma as commercial entertainment. And part of what drew Thompson in was how thoroughly the show explored not just the industry, but how the characters represented all the different types of relationships people have with that industry – the good, the bad, and the ugly.
“I thought what [Smith and Pernick] were doing was so fresh in using the eyes of a young woman and a story of family to explore this industry and how it exploits people,” Thompson said.
Creating one voice
The music of “Like Father” also sits at an interesting intersection, one that fuses both Smith and Pernick’s different writing styles. In many creative partnerships (Rodgers and Hammerstein, Kander and Ebb, etc.) one person writes the lyrics, and one person writes the music. Maybe one person writes the music and lyrics and another writes the book, or one writes the book and the lyrics while another writes the music. But in “Like Father,” Pernick and Smith both tackle all three.
“To have us both on the music with such different skillsets, it kind of creates a dichotomy that I don’t know if it exists in theater yet, which is very, very exciting,” Pernick said.
The result is a mix of old and new. Smith with his degree in composition, and Pernick with her singer/songwriter background together come with a smorgasbord of influences and musical interests that range from Stephen Sondheim to Lizzy McAlpine. They both come from a performance background as well, which means they both focused on making sure the musical would be fun to put on, giving the actors meaty roles and music to sink their teeth into.
“That has made for a very interesting partnership where we’ve had to navigate together where we each thrive, and then where we each build on what the other person does,” Pernick said.
There are songs in the show that come mainly from Pernick or mainly from Smith. But, especially as they continued to work and grow together, more songs began to coalesce that were truly 50/50, creating one musical voice.
“What is 100 percent true is no song in the show, in its way, could exist without the collaboration between us,” Smith said. “It’s always letting in the other person’s idea and allowing their instincts to form around the song and affect how the song thrives in the show as a whole. And it creates one voice”
Two things can be true
At the heart of “Like Father” – both in its story and in its production journey – one thing has come to the forefront: two things can be true. Your dad can do something unforgiveable, and you can still love him. You can enjoy true crime, and still feel grossed out by that fact. Truth is never simple, but accepting that is part of growing up.
“To be a well-rounded person, without having to hide from how scary it is to accept contradictory things, we have to begin to learn to live in the gray,” Smith said. “There is no binary on truth. Truth just is, and it often times fights with itself.”
That’s a difficult thing to accept. But for Pernick and Smith, art has never been about making things easy. With “Like Father,” it wasn’t about creating a show that everyone could relate to or that everyone would like. It was about tackling a difficult idea that meant something and challenging the audience with those questions.
“I think that’s really a bad mentality that dulls art. I think you should come in and feel challenged,” Smith said. “Some things should anger you. Some things should excite you. Some things should make you question yourself or the people around you, or your own morality. That is why we do this.”
Pernick acknowledged that some people might have to protect themselves from certain themes or ideas. But as an art form, theater can be a place to experience discomfort safely.
“There’s a difference between being challenged and being in danger. And there are certain things that certain people should not see, because it would put them in a state of, ‘I’m in danger.” and that’s okay,” Pernick said. “But if you are in a space where you have the capacity, yes – it is a safe space for a challenge to happen.”
You might think that the difficulty of the subject matter of “Like Father” would make Thompson’s job as a producer more difficult. And she acknowledged that the bar for original musicals these days is a high one – it’s a lot less of a risk to put up “Mean Girls: The Musical” than it is to produce something original. But Thompson said that when Smith originally pitched her the idea, she saw an opportunity. She thought it was strategic to use true crime – essentially, intellectual property with a built-in audience, but without the price tag – as a way to tell a difficult, complex story.
“The hope is that those two things marry together, and that a whole family can come see it, and every single person will take something away differently because of the life experience they are bringing when they walk into the theater,” Thompson said. “That in itself creates conversation on the way home.”
Smith said he wasn’t thinking about the strategy behind using true crime at the time, and credited Thompson and other producers for seeing the marketing potential of the show without compromising on he and Pernick’s vision.
“We’ve had a lot of very smart producers who have seen this and understood that two things can be true,” he said. “You can both hold the ambitions that 23-year-old Jake and 22-year-old Caroline held when they first started building this story together, and also there’s a way to market it to people where they can come into our domain and understand the story we’re telling.”
“Like Father” premieres Oct. 8 at the Alliance Theatre – right in the same city where Thompson and Smith had their own coming of age.
“I hope that this show kicks off even more conversation and artistry and deep community building within Atlanta in the way that they are championing artists from their own community and starting that conversation,” Thompson said. “It’s been really incredible over the last couple of weeks to be in Atlanta, be engaging with this community, and to have them show up for their own. And I hope that continues more.”
