Where do theater artists go to ask questions? Poughkeepsie. Guests outside the tent where Michael R. Jackson's "White Girl in Danger" was going to be performed at Marist College on the banks of the Hudson River in Poughkeepsie, N.Y., July 21, 2021. Lauren Lancaster/The New York Times. by Jesse Green (NYT NEWS SERVICE) .- For Michael R. Jackson, the question was quite specific. What kind of underscoring do you write for a melodramatic yet serious musical inspired by soap operas, Lifetime movies and Law and Order: SVU? Jackson has been developing his musical, White Girl in Danger, since 2017, through so many workshops and readings that he can barely list them all. He had already nailed down the plot, about a Black performer on a surreal soap who schemes, from the blackground, to outshine the white stars and get a story of her own.