David Quang Pham

David Quang Pham is a science communicator and composer-playwright in Washington Heights. As a Midwestern child of Vietnamese immigrants, they are drawn to stories about where life can go if you let curiosity take you. They earned an astrophysics degree and theatre minor at Michigan State University and studied playwriting as a Working Title Playwrights apprentice in Atlanta and Playwrights Foundation fellow in San Francisco. This composer’s best-known science musicals include Ellipses, a universal musical starring the Galaxy family and their dog Gravity during the Big Bang, and Turnover: A New Leaf, a plant-based musical about green cards. Turnover was nominated for Best Musical and won Best Book and Director (Aliyah Curry) in Philadelphia's New Musicals Festival. Queer Theatre Kalamazoo is producing Turnover at Jolliffe Theatre in May 2025. Their musicals have been produced in Atlanta; Boulder, Colorado; Manhattan; Philadelphia; and Coimbra, Portugal. Composers Janelle Lawrence and Gonzalo Valencia-Peña mentor them, helping forge their musical styles from pop, punk, to Cai Luong. When not writing songs full of science puns, they play trombone in the Queer Big Apples Corps and study Vietnamese zithers. They plan to stage shows in outer space. Be up to lightspeed at sciencetheatre.us and @sciencetheatre.