is coming back to . The country music legend announced on Thursday, June 6, that she is working to create , a musical based on her life. Parton, 78, will write the music, cowrite the book and serve as producer on the show, which is named for her first studio album and targeting a 2026 opening.
for ATG Production and for CTK Enterprises will help produce. “Hello, I’m Dolly, and I lived my whole life to see this show on stage,” she said in a statement. “I’ve written many original songs for the show and included all your favorites in it as well.
You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll clap, you’ll stomp; it truly is a Grand Ol’ Opera. Pun and fun intended. Don’t miss it!” In a press conference at CMA Fest on Thursday, Parton noted that Hello, I’m Dolly is not a jukebox musical, meaning it won’t just feature her past hits reworked as showtunes.
“You’ll get to know all of my life up to now,” she added. “It really does have a lot of story, a lot of family.” She went on to note that she’s been thinking about telling her life story for years, but it’s taken a while to get the concept right.
“Everybody just wanted to take it up to the Porter [Wagoner] days,” she recalled. “My life didn’t even begin until after that, till the ’70s! Although all those days were important, we do cover all of those years and all the things that we went through. I thought, ‘Well I need to write some original music where it really tells my life story from the t.