The Project

Samantha Spade, Ace Detective is here to introduce a whole new generation to the dames, palookas, grifters, chiselers, flatfoots and flim-flammers of a hard-boiled detective’s black-and-white world.

Created by Lisa Diana Shapiro with music by Georgia Stitt, this film-noir-detective-story-musical is a multi-media project encompassing theatre, video, music, dance and the internet. Initially conceived as a stage musical and growing from there, Samantha Spade, Ace Detective was originally commissioned and produced by TADA! Youth Theater in New York City, Executive and Artistic Director, Janine Nina Trevens. Samantha Spade, Ace Detective: The Case of the Maltball Falcon premiered at TADA! in spring of 2014. And look for Samantha’s first adventure in print soon!

In a world full of cell phones, iPads, 3-D movies and instant gratification of all kinds, Samantha Spade reaches back to Harriet the Spy, Nancy Drew, Encyclopedia Brown and, of course, those great old Humphrey Bogart movies that we love, to create a black-and-white world full of colorful characters where imagination, intellect and observation – not extreme special effects – are required to solve the case.

It’s film noir, freshly imagined for a new generation.

But first, you gotta learn to talk the talk.

Were you wondering what it means when the redhot needs to borrow some spondulix from the butter-and-egg man so he won’t get sent to the hoosegow? Learn to sling the slang with Samantha, so you can go searching for clues on those black-and-white streets with the smartest gumshoe in town.

Welcome to the world of Samantha Spade, Ace Detective. Don’t forget to wear a swell hat.