Stupid
Courage
Productions
the life and art of
Micheal Frances &
Michael W. Shanahan
Our first meeting in the 1980’s
Stupid Courage Productions was born from a late-life creative fire and our refusal to let dreams die.
We return to our first loves - singing, acting, writing, and directing - to create work driven by the motto: do it anyway.
Embracing the journey, welcoming the joy, the discipline, and the fear of starting anew, we are fulfilling a quiet ambition. We hope it emboldens others to do the same. It takes Stupid Courage to begin now... but do it anyway!
❋ Screen WritingWe value scripts that take emotional, structural, or cultural risks — not recklessness, but the kind of bravery that comes from telling the truth even when it’s inconvenient. We elevate stories that haven’t been granted the microphone: Indigenous narratives, queer histories, working‑class lives, and communities whose stories have been appropriated or erased. Our job is not to “translate” them for the mainstream but to amplify them on their own terms.
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❋ StageWe make theatre that strips everything down to what’s true. We work with bare stages, bold actors, and voices that don’t usually get center light. No spectacle, no softening—just raw stories from unheard perspectives, delivered with immediacy and nerve.
Our latest work.
Our latest project will always be here, the one we’re most excited about. Check it out.
WE’WHA’S DREAM
Three Misfits, two cultures, one remarkable journey. We'wha's Dream, inspired by actual events in American history, is the story of an unlikely alliance between two ethnographers sent to document Zuni culture, where they meet a Zuni two-spirit named "We'wha."