The Legend of Sleepy Hollow: A Musical Fable (1999). Book and Lyrics. Score by Robert Firpo-Cappiello.  Full staged reading (script and sung lyrics),  April 17, 2000, Century Center, New York.  An adaptation of Washington Irving's uniquely American folktale, regarded as the first European American published folklore written in the United States. In this treatment we develop the struggle for freedom which was the primary story in every instance of American plantation slavery (including early Northern plantations).  Demby's father Barney is African and his mother is a Delaware Indian.  Katrina Van Tassel, the Squire's daughter, is normally depicted as a flirtatious coquette, but in our version, instead of a willing participant in her father's wishes to marry her off to a suitable man, her struggle with her father to decide her fate is another key element of this story.  Because the original tale is also quite compelling, we have retained much of the main character and flavor of Irving's story, in which Ichabod Crane, the lanky  schoolmaster, arrives in Sleepy Hollow and falls in love with Katrina Van Tassel, only to be challenged for Katrina's affections by the athletic, boisterous Brom  Bones, and eventually chased from town by the Headless Horseman. In our version, Demby teaches Katrina how to ride a horse, and teaches her about self-reliance and freedom. Instead of turning into an empty-headed flirt, our Katrina develops a mind of her own, and ends up rejecting both Brom and Ichabod, generating comedy and pathos along the way. Our songs are in the animated musical tradition of Alan Menken and Stephen Schwartz, and reflect the story's comic and tragic elements.