Fran Pado is a New York City–based playwright and musician whose work fuses the eerie logic of fairy tales with the rawness of experimental theater and scary, beautiful music.

Described by director/playwright Laia Comas as a “mad witch about town,” Pado creates unsettling, poetic worlds that are driven by spooky, atonal narrative and sound. Her pieces are incantatory webs - text interwoven with the music of her experimental psych-folk band, Goddess. These grim, funny pieces hover between childhood and nightmare - fairy tales for grown-ups. 

Her shows have been produced at spaces such as the Brick Theater, Dixon Place, and Sid Gold’s. Her mall-based song cycle, The Mall Part 1, was first performed on YouTube during lockdown - the actors performed in their closets and never met for an in-person rehearsal. A year later, The Mall went on to a live premier in ?!: Festival, the Brick’s incubator for experimental theater.

Pado’s work confronts her lived landscape: blue-collar New Jersey, suburban myths, and ancestral trauma.Her odd voice resists labels— she makes children’s tales steeped in the strange and sad beauty of damaged worlds. Whether conjuring lost children, spectral suburbs, or fractured minds, she invites audiences into spaces where myth and memory intertwine. The familiar becomes terrifying and uncanny.

Her band, Goddess, with its sing-song lyrics and distinctive voice, interweaved layered, psychedelic moments to boost Pado’s narrative.  As the singer and lyricist for Goddess, Pado brought her experimental songs to Wave Hill, the Sculpture Center, the Queens Museum, and Chashama. Goddess has numerous releases available on all streaming sites.  In 2026, Goddess reformed as Moss Cathedral, adding drums, a violin, and various found objects. Their EP drops this summer.