ANAHEIM, Calif. — In March 2025, actress-singer Katey Sagal, star of such TV series as “Married … With Children” and “Sons of Anarchy,” felt despondent about the state of the world.

The Palisades and Eaton wildfires had recently devastated swathes of Pacific Palisades, where Sagal had gone to high school, and Altadena. Friends in both communities had lost homes, and she and her husband Kurt Sutter, creator of “Sons of Anarchy,” had evacuated their Hollywood home as the Sunset wildfire approached.

The return of Donald Trump to the White House in January, and the shifts in government programs and policies they included, also shook Sagal, she says.

“I was feeling kind of crazy about the world,” Sagal says on a recent call. “Not the Hollywood world — I mean the world in general.”

So she did what she’d done since childhood; she leaned into music for comfort in hard times. Not a band as she’s often had in the past, but a chorus of 10 or 11 voices.

“I was trying to find a choral group, and I couldn’t find one,” Sagal says. “So I said, ‘Oh well, I’m going to start one.’ I called some friends, and I gathered some people, and I started listening for music I thought would translate well chorally. And we just started in my living room.

“I’d feed everybody, and we’d sing,” she says. “And as I started to find more material, it started to really sound good. Everybody in the choir is a soloist as well, so it’s not just the choir all throughout. It’s soloists and choir, just all one big thing.”

In time, the songs she chose seemed to fit together into an arc that flowed from despair and sorrow to hopefulness and unity, Sagal says.

As 2025 unfolded, Sagal decided that there was, in fact, something she, fellow singers and her husband could do.

“Khorus Harmonia” is the choral production that emerged from all those weeks of song. On Wednesday, April 22, Sagal and the chorus kick off a limited run at the Hudson Theatre in Los Angeles that wraps up Saturday, May 2.

All proceeds will be donated to the Wounded Warrior Project and the Coalition for Humane Immigration Rights.

Through music and song, a feeling of community and connection grew, Sagal says, a sentiment she hopes the show will spread to its audiences.

“We have survived, and we’ve gotten through it,” Sagal says. “I don’t want to get too saccharine-y [but] the answer to all that in my estimation is community and hanging together.”

In an interview edited for length and clarity, Sagal discussed how “Khorus Harmonia” left the living room for the stage, how the songs she chose fit with the staging and dialogue Sutter crafted, and how it feels a year later to have created a positive show from the ashes and despair of 2025.

Q: So describe the show — a concert, a musical, a play?

A: It’s a hybrid theatrical experience, I would say. It’s a choir, but it’s in a theater. And it’s got me talking, but I don’t want to call it a musical. It’s not a musical, it’s not a play; it’s just a moment that lasts about an hour, and it has morphed into everything I wanted it to do.

Selfishly, for me, it’s to make me feel better. [She laughs] I think the thought of sharing it, I really do believe that it has some sort of emotional impact. So it’s just an experience that turned into this super-lovely thing, and I don’t even know exactly how to describe it except that it’s pretty special.

Q: You said you started doing this about a year ago, which would be around the time of the wildfires and the presidential inauguration?

A: Yeah, it was a [bleep] show. [She laughs] March of 2025 was just like, “What is happening?”

Q: What did singing with other people provide you with?

A: It was a real time of powerlessness. Just feeling like, Oh my, you don’t know what to do. And for me, since I’m a kid, music has always been a pretty grounding force. A way to feel safe, a way to communicate. It was kind of my social lubricant. And I love singing with other people.

There’s an energy about it that really resonates and is powerful. So that was the goal, and I followed through on it. You know, you have those things in your life where you’re like, “Oh, that would be a great idea. I think I’ll do that.” And you have it for a month and [it goes away].

But there was something about it personally for me that wasn’t a career move. It wasn’t like, Here’s the next thing that will get me to the next thing that will get me – which is kind of the life of an artist, trying to make a living. This was more purely to be of service in some kind of way, and we followed it through and here it is.

Q: Can you share an example of a song that’s in the show for the emotional journey it follows?

A: Sure, the opening song is by a band called Dawes, and it’s called “Things Happen.” The literal translation of the song is a love song. But the chorus of the song is basically that things happen out of our control. So that opens the evening and paints a picture of how out of control things can feel sometimes.

Then halfway through we do a John Hiatt song called “Have a Little Faith in Me.” We kind of go through this arc after “Things Happen” of – not destruction songs – but songs that spur a kind of feeling. And then we move towards a more faithful moment with a song like that.

Then we have an original song that is really strong. It talks a little bit about No Kings [protests]. And we end on a really beautiful choral song that I don’t think anybody really knows called “We Shall Be Known.” It’s a song about unity, and that’s where we end.

Q: As far as how Kurt helped with the production, can you describe what he did?

A: Well, I’m sort of a narrator. I don’t speak a lot, but I speak significantly. He’s written it in a form that I want to say is like a Greek chorus a little bit. There’s a sort of slam poetry element to it. He just wrote some beautiful words that thread through the music, and they kind of hone in on the themes that we happen to be at in that particular part of the show.

It’s a quick evening. It’s not something laborious. It’s just something that hopefully you take home with you.

Q: I’ve seen it described on your social media as “music and feels in 66 minutes,” which is a very specific number.

A: I got to tell you, it’s timing out pretty close. [She laughs] I think [Kurt] named it that based on the length of the songs and then adding in some of the pieces that I speak, and it comes out pretty close to 66 minutes.

Q: As far as the “feels,” what was it like to take part in the first dress rehearsal yesterday?

A: Super proud of all the people involved. They’ve all put in a lot of effort, and they’re all musicians, so it hits them the same way it hits me. I can tell you that by the time I got to the very end of last night, I was very choked up. With an emotional reaction that was joyful, not hopeless.

There’s such satisfaction in knowing that everybody is committed and everybody is putting their best self forward. They are amazing singers, and it’s such a fulfilling musical experience. So I think the answer to the question is just a joyful emotion that we are actually doing this from my living room and my kitchen and here we are.

Q: A year after you started this project do you feel more hopeful than you did then?

A: This is what I’ll say. The easiest thing, or the best thing for me to do for my own nervous system, is to turn my angst into some kind of service. It feels so out of control a lot of times right now.

I have a deep belief that the consciousness raising of one person can help raise the consciousness of other people. Years ago, I did a lot of charity work for the homeless. And we had this really great guy that was in charge of this group, and he would always talk about how everybody feels like they can’t do anything, so nobody does anything. [But] one person doing something helps out.

So, do I feel better within it? I feel like if we can make somebody feel better, I think the overall message is [we are] not so alone.

I do believe that some of the way out emotionally is to understand that we are in this together. And that collectively we can make some sort of difference, and that collectively we can make a noise.

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‘KHORUS HARMONIA’

What: A hybrid theatrical-choral performance that features contemporary songs arranged for choir.

When: Wednesday, April 22, through Saturday, May 10, with shows Wednesday through Saturday at 8 p.m. and Sunday at 4 p.m.

Where: The Hudson Theatres, 6539 Santa Monica Blvd., Los Angeles

How much: $45 with all proceeds from ticket sales donated to the Wounded Warrior Project and the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights.

For more: For tickets and information see Onstage411.com.

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