Last night, King 5’s “Evening Magazine” featured Ellen Forney’s Summer Comics Studio, part of the Summer at Cornish Art + Design program. You can still register for Ellen’s Comics Studio during the second Summer at Cornish session, which runs July 26 - August 13, 2010.

The Merce Cunningham minEvent Project spans the 2010/2011 academic year and includes community events and campus-wide collaborations: performances, a multidisciplinary art exhibition, master classes, lecture-demonstrations, panel discussions, open rehearsals, workshops for youth choreographers, and community outreach activities in partnership with local public schools and cultural institutions. The minEvent Project will commemorate Cunningham’s artistic legacy, honoring his creative partnership with composer John Cage, and their association with Cornish and the Northwest.

• minEvent Activities
• minEvent Public Event Schedule
• minEvent Cheat Sheet
• minEvent Biographies

Cunningham minEvent ACTIVITIES

The Cornish Dance Department will stage a minEvent by dance icon Merce Cunningham in fall 2010, presenting an uninterrupted sequence of excerpts drawn from three Cunningham masterworks: Roaratorio (1983), Fabrications (1987), and Enter (1993). Former Cunningham dancer Patricia Lent will stage the performance during a 3-week residency with Dance faculty Deborah Wolf acting as rehearsal director. Cornish Dance Theater will perform the Cunningham minEvent as part of the November 2010 Cornish Dance Theater Fall Concert to music by John Cage performed live by the Cornish Music Department’s student Indeterminacy Ensemble under the direction of Music faculty Jarrad Powell, with costumes by Performance Production Department faculty and students.

A site specific performance of the minEvent will also be presented in the Cornish Main Gallery in conjunction with the exhibit Cunningham in the Northwest, a multidisciplinary art exhibition co-curated by Jess Van Nostrand and Bridget Nowlin exploring the connection between the groundbreaking choreographer and his hometown region.

The first art exhibition to look at Cunningham’s work within the context of the Pacific Northwest, Cunningham in the Northwest honors the choreographer’s legacy and examines ways in which his relationship to Cornish and the Northwest inform his philosophies and the work he created. The exhibition features archival material from Cunningham’s student days at Cornish through contemporary work by Northwest artists who collaborated with the choreographer. Among those featured include Seattle sound artist Trimpin, and Seattle printmaker Barbara Robertson.

During spring 2011, additional site-specific performances of the minEvent will take place at the Seattle Art Museum, the Olympic Sculpture Park, ACT Theater and a Seattle Theater Group season dance presentation, guided by Dance faculty Tonya Lockyer.

Community activities in partnership with public schools and local cultural institutions will extend throughout the 2010/2011 academic year including lecture-demonstrations on Cunningham’s creative methods and choreographic legacy; a panel discussion on collaboration in the arts; open rehearsals; workshops for youth choreographers; lecture demonstrations at public schools; and distribution of performance tickets to underserved communities.

The Merce Cunningham minEvent Project has been made possible by support from the National Endowment for the Arts as part of American Masterpieces: “Three Centuries of Artistic Genius” with additional support from the Bossak/Heilbron Charitable Foundation.

Cunningham minEvent PUBLIC EVENTS SCHEDULE

FALL 2010

Exhibition: Cunningham in the Northwest
September 8 - October 22, 2010
Cornish Main Gallery
1000 Lenora St., Seattle, WA
Opening Reception: September 7, 5-8 pm
Preview available between September 2-7 by appointment.

Lecture: Dancing for Merce Cunningham
Monday September 20, 7:30-8:30 pm
PONCHO Concert Hall
710 East Roy, Seattle, WA
Patricia Lent, former Merce Cunningham Dance Company member, discusses ground-breaking aspects of Cunningham’s work including the separation of music and dance, the use of chance procedures, and the use of computer software.  Her talk focuses on the challenges and opportunities dancers face when learning and performing Cunningham’s work. 

Lecture: Lunchtime Conversation with Trimpin
Date TBD
Cornish Main Gallery
1000 Lenora St., Seattle, WA
The artist shares his experience collaborating with Merce Cunningham on “Installations” (1996).

Open rehearsal of the minEvent, directed by Patricia Lent
Friday October 1, 1:30-3:30 pm
Kerry Hall, Room 300
710 East Roy, Seattle, WA

Cunningham minEvent gallery performances
In conjunction with Cunningham in the Northwest art exhibition
Friday October 8, 12:15 pm and 1 pm
Cornish Main Gallery
1000 Lenora St, Seattle, WA
Performed by Cornish Dance Theater and the Indeterminacy Ensemble, this performance is part of Interface, Cornish’s interdisciplinary event series celebrating and promoting artistic collaboration across the campus.

CUNNINGHAM minEvent PERFORMANCES: Cornish Dance Theater Fall 2010 Concert
Friday November 19 at 8 pm, Saturday November 20 at 2 pm and 8 pm
Broadway Performance Hall
1625 Broadway, Seattle, WA
Performed by Cornish Dance Theater and the Indeterminacy Ensemble.

SPRING 2011

Site-specific minEvent performances
Date/time TBA
Locations include Seattle Art Museum, Olympic Sculpture Park, a Seattle Theater Group Dance Series performance, and ACT Theater.

Panel: Collaboration in the Arts
Date/time/location TBA
Part of the Spring 2011 Interface series

Cunningham minEvent CHEAT SHEET

“In his final years (Cunningham) became almost routinely hailed as the world’s greatest choreographer. For many, he had simply been the greatest living artist since Samuel Beckett. . . He was American modern dance’s equivalent of Nijinsky.”
- Alistair Macaulay, The New York Times.

CUNNINGHAM & THE PACIFIC NORTHWEST: Mercier Philip Cunningham was born in Centralia, Washington and went on to international renown; but he took his birthplace with him. The names of Cunningham dances “Borst Park” (1972), “Inlets” (1977) and “Inlets 2” (1983), all refer to parts of Washington. It was as a student at Cornish College of the Arts, Seattle that Cunningham met his life-long collaborator and partner John Cage, and they began their groundbreaking interdisciplinary experiments. 

COLLABORATION: Dance counts Cunningham as one of its barrier-breaking pioneers, but the realms of performance, music, film, theater and conceptual art have also directly benefited from his radical innovations and collaborations with artists in a variety of media. It has often been said that Cunningham’s record as collaborator with contemporary artists and composers rivals that of the Diaghilev Ballets Russes, which brought painters such as Picasso and Matisse; and composers Stravinsky, Prokofiev and Ravel to the stage. The variety of accomplished artists and composers Cunningham worked with is a testament to the brilliant challenge of working with him. Merce Cunningham Dance Company collaborated with Andy Warhol, Jasper Johns, Roy Lichtenstein, Bruce Nauman, Marcel Duchamp, Robert Rauschenberg, Frank Stella, and Northwest artists Morris Graves and Barbara Robertson. MCDC repertory composers included Brian Eno, Morton Feldman, Gavin Bryars, Pauline Oliveros, Radiohead, Sonic Youth, Icelandic pop group Sigur Ros, and PNW artists Stuart Dempster and Trimpin. Cunningham’s most famous collaborator was composer John Cage whose musical concepts were a deep part of Cunningham’s process.

TAKING DANCE “EVENTS” TO UNUSUAL PLACES: Cunningham’s site-specific body of work known as “Events” collaborate with spaces and audiences. An ‘‘Event’’ consists of an uninterrupted sequence of excerpts from several dances in the MCDC repertory designed to suit the particular space in which it is presented. These dance fragments are so intermingled as to constitute a new entity which is satisfying on its own terms.  “Events” also reflect Cunningham’s love of unconventional spaces for performance; over the years they included the Piazza San Marco in Venice, Grand Central Terminal in New York and a beach in Perth, Australia. A “minEvent” is a shorter version of one of these evening-length site-specific performances.

Cunningham minEvent BIOGRAPHIES

MERCE CUNNINGHAM (1919-2009) was born in Centralia, Washington. He received his first formal dance and theater training at the Cornish School (now Cornish College of the Arts) in Seattle. From 1939 to 1945, he was a soloist in the company of Martha Graham. He presented his first New York solo concert with John Cage in April 1944. Merce Cunningham Dance Company was formed at Black Mountain College in the summer of 1953. Since that time Cunningham choreographed nearly 200 works for his company.

His work has also been presented by New York City Ballet, the Ballet of the Paris Opera, American Ballet Theatre, Boston Ballet, White Oak Dance Project, Pacific Northwest Ballet, Pennsylvania Ballet, Zurich Ballet, Netherlands Ballet, and Rambert Dance Company (London), among others.

Cunningham worked extensively in film and video, in collaboration first with Charles Atlas and later with Elliot Caplan. In 1999, the collaboration with Atlas was resumed with the production of the documentary Merce Cunningham, a Lifetime of Dance. Atlas has directed further archival films of repertory works as part of an ongoing project funded by the Mellon Foundation.  The new webcast series Mondays with Merce features footage of Cunningham leading technique class and Company rehearsal interwoven with archival footage and interviews with former dancers and collaborators.

Cunningham’s interest in contemporary technology also led him to work with the computer program DanceForms, which he has used in making all his dances since Trackers (1991). In 1997, he began work in motion capture with Paul Kaiser and Shelley Eshkar of Riverbed Media to develop the décor for BIPED, with music by Gavin Bryars.

His final production, Nearly Ninety, premiered at the Brooklyn Academy of Music on his 90th birthday on April 16, 2009. Nearly Ninety featured a score composed and performed live by Sonic Youth, Led Zeppelin cofounder John Paul Jones, and longtime MCDC music director Takehisa Kosugi as well as the work of Barcelona-based architect Benedetta Tagliabue, fashion designer Romeo Gigli, and Tony award-winning lighting designer Brian MacDevitt. 

Merce Cunningham was the recipient of numerous awards including the Praemium Imperiale, Tokyo (2005), the Dorothy and Lillian Gish Prize (2000), the Handel Medallion from the Mayor of New York City (1999), the Golden Lion of the Venice Biennale (1995), and the Wexner Prize of the Wexner Center for the Arts at Ohio State University, Columbus (with John Cage, posthumously, 1993). Cunningham was also a recipient of the National Medal of Arts (1990) and the Kennedy Center Honors (1985), a Laurence Olivier Award in London (1985), and a MacArthur Fellowship (1985). In France, he was made Officer of the Legion d’Honneur (1989) and Commander of the Order of Arts and Letters (2004).

PATRICIA LENT was a member of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company (1984-1993) and White Oak Dance Project (1994-1996).  She has been on the faculty of the Merce Cunningham Studio since 1988, teaching technique classes and workshops, and staging repertory.  She is currently the Director of Repertory Licensing for the Cunningham Dance Foundation, and was recently named a trustee of the Cunningham Trust.  From 1998 to 2007, Lent taught second and third grade at P.S. 234 in Lower Manhattan.  Her essay in Forever After:  New York City Teachers on 9/11, includes an account of the class trip she took to an MCDC rehearsal which launched the Cunningham Studio’s Educational Outreach Program.  She holds a B.A. from the University of Virginia, and an M.S.Ed. from Bank Street College of Education.

DEBORAH WOLF is a professor in the Dance Department at Cornish College of the Arts where she has taught since 1992. She has been teaching, performing and choreographing for over thirty years, nineteen of which were with Concert Dance Company of Boston, New England’s premier modern repertory ensemble. At CDC, she was Artistic Director, Resident Choreographer and dancer, performing works by over 50 choreographers including Merce Cunningham, Bebe Miller, and Mark Morris. A recipient of a Massachusetts Artist Fellowship and seven Finalist Awards in choreography, she has also received grants from the NEA, Boston area Arts Councils, and Seattle’s Artist Trust. Her work has been produced or commissioned by Boston Ballet, Jacob’s Pillow, Boston’s Dance Umbrella, Velocity’s Strictly Seattle, Men in Dance, Composer/Choreographer, Bellingham Repertory Dance, and On the Boards’ 12 Minute Max Mainstage, and Northwest New Works, among others. Most recently her work was selected for The A.W.A.R.D. Show! 2009, administered by The Joyce Theater and On the Boards.

JARRAD POWELL is Professor in the Music Department at Cornish College of the Arts where he has taught since 1987. His compositions have been performed and broadcast internationally and include pieces for voice, gamelan, various western and non-western instruments, electro-acoustic music, music for theater, dance and experimental film.

Since the early 80’s he has directed the group Gamelan Pacifica, one of the most active and adventurous gamelan ensembles in the U.S. He is Music Director and composer for Scott/Powell Performance, a contemporary dance company formed in 1994 with noted choreographer Mary Sheldon Scott. Commissions include the Walker Arts Center, Performing Arts Chicago, On the Boards, Music in Motion, the Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art, and many others. He has received numerous grants, including NEA, Arts International, Rockefeller Foundation, Artist Trust Foundation and Creative Capital Foundation.

TONYA LOCKYER is a dance artist and educator with a special interest in site-specific performance. Lockyer studied on scholarship at the Merce Cunningham Studios 1990-93: studying with Cunningham, performing his masterworks Torse and Sounddance, and working in the Cage/Cunningham Archives.  As a dancer and award-winning choreographer Lockyer has directed site-specific events in the U.S., Canada, Mexico and Russia. She was also a member of Magnetic Laboratorium, a New York City interdisciplinary collective including alumni of the company’s of Cunningham and Robert Wilson that created large scale “street-action” performances. As Artistic Director of VIA, she has also enjoyed a performing career since 1990 with numerous American and internationally-based artists and companies. Her work has toured internationally receiving awards from Arts International, The Nureyev Foundation, The Canada Council and The Banff Center. She holds an MFA from the University of Washington.

For additional information please contact Meike Kaan at mkaan@cornish.edu or Lindsay Walter lwalter@cornish.edu or visit http://www.cornish.edu.

About Cornish College of the Arts

Cornish College of the Arts is nationally recognized as a premier college of the visual and performing arts offering Bachelor of Fine Arts degrees in dance, theater, art, design and performance production, and a Bachelor of Music degree. A pioneer in arts education, Cornish College of the Arts sprang from the remarkable vision of Nellie Cornish, a woman determined to cultivate the arts in Seattle when it was scarcely more than a frontier town. Her philosophy of educating the artist through exposure to all the arts was progressive at the time, and continues to be innovative today.

Tune in to see Cornish Alumnus Mark Velasquez (Art ’00), as he competes with 13 other artists to win a solo show in the renowned Brooklyn Museum.

Work of Art: The Next Great Artist
Premieres tonight, June 9th, on Bravo. 11/10 Central

You can read more about Mark and the show in The Stranger, Art in America Magazine, Newsweek, Vanity Fair, and Time Magazine.

Bill Evans, choreographer and performer, and Norm Rice, former Seattle Mayor and current President and CEO of the Seattle Foundation, have been selected to receive honorary degrees from Cornish College of the Arts. The lively ceremony will also feature guest speaker Ben Cameron, Program Director for the Arts at the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation.

Cornish College of the Arts
2010 Commencement Ceremony
Saturday, May 15, 1 pm
Benaroya Hall
200 University Street
maps and directions

Biographies

Bill Evans

Bill Evans is an internationally-known performer and choreographer of modern dance and rhythm tap dance, as well as an artistic director, movement analyst, speaker and writer. He is first and foremost a dance educator, the creator of a widely-practiced method of teaching modern dance technique. He has a BA in English and ballet and an MFA in modern dance from the University of Utah.

He is artistic director of the internationally-acclaimed Bill Evans Dance Company. He founded the Bill Evans Rhythm Tap Ensemble in 1992 and the New Mexico Tap Dance Jams in 1999. He founded the Evans Modern Dance Technique Certification Program in 2002.

He is on the permanent guest faculty of the Professional Program of Winnipeg’s Contemporary Dancers and was previously artistic director of Winnipeg’s Contemporary Dancers and the School of Contemporary Dancers. He is former director of the Dance Theatre Seattle/Bill Evans Dance Company School of Modern Dance, as well as former artistic coordinator of the Repertory Dance Theatre (Salt Lake City), where he was also the leading resident choreographer and a featured performer.

Since 2004, he has served as a visiting professor/guest artist in the Dance Department of SUNY Brockport. He is distinguished professor emeritus in the Department of Theatre and Dance at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, and was an associate professor and director of modern dance at Indiana University, a visiting professor of dance at the University of Washington and an assistant professor of modern dance at the University of Utah.

Evans has choreographed more than 200 works for more than sixty professional dance companies and been awarded the Guggenheim Fellowship and numerous grants and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts. He was named Scholar/Artist of the year by the National Dance Association in 1997 and was voted one of the three top American tap dance artists in the most recent Dance Magazine Readers Poll. He was selected for the Lifetime Achievement Award by the National Dance Education Organization in 2005.

His book, Reminiscences of a Dancing Man: A Photographic Journey of a Life In Dance, was published in 2005. He is in the process of writing a textbook on Evans Modern Dance Technique, a textbook for secondary schools in dance technique and performance, and an autobiography. He is the subject of The Legacy: Bill Evans, Reaching Out from the Regional Southwest. He has published two instructional videotapes, has two more in production and is the subject of a recently published video interview, Dance On: Bill Evans.

Norm Rice

Norm Rice is the President and CEO of The Seattle Foundation, one of the nation’s largest community foundations. The foundation’s mission is to create healthy communities through engaged philanthropy, community knowledge and leadership.

Mr. Rice has served as Distinguished Visiting Practitioner at University of Washington’s Daniel J. Evans School of Public Affairs. He is former president and chief executive officer of the Federal Home Loan Bank of Seattle. In this post, he brought his passion and commitment for housing and community development to the private sector and worked with more than 375 financial institutions to make their communities better places to work and live. Prior to joining the Seattle Bank, Mr. Rice was Mayor of Seattle, president of the U.S. Conference of Mayors and a long-time city council member.

As mayor (1990-1997), Mr. Rice earned national acclaim for revitalizing Seattle’s downtown and strengthening the city neighborhoods through public-private partnerships. While in office, Mr. Rice championed for an improved public school system, breathed new life into Seattle’s downtown with new retail centers, housing and civic buildings, and implemented a model welfare-to-work program.

Mr. Rice holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in communications and a Master of Arts degree in public administration from the University of Washington. He holds honorary doctorates from Seattle University, University of Puget Sound and Whitman College.

Mr. Rice is committed to fostering the development of vibrant, diverse, self-sustaining communities through housing and economic development. Currently, Mr. Rice is a member of the Brookings Institution’s Advisory Committee for Sustainable Communities. He serves as Chairman of the board of directors for the Enterprise Community Partners, the Fifth Avenue Theatre, and United Way of King County. He serves on the board of the YMCA of Greater Seattle and the King County Committee to End Homelessness.

Mr. Rice is the recipient of numerous professional and community awards. He is married to Dr. Constance Rice and they have one adult son, Mian.

Ben Cameron

In 2006, Ben Cameron assumed his current position as Program Director, Arts at the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation in New York, NY. In that capacity, he supervises a $17 million grants program focusing on organizations and artists in the theatre, contemporary dance, jazz and presenting fields.

Previously, he served for more than 8 years as the Executive Director of Theatre Communications Group (TCG), the national service organization for the American nonprofit professional theater, significantly expanding its programs, membership base and grantmaking activities. Prior roles include his work as Senior Program Officer at the Dayton Hudson Foundation, Manager of Community Relations for Target Stores (supervising its grantmaking program) and four years at the National Endowment for the Arts, including two as Director of the Theater Program. A former theatre professional, frequent public speaker and arts activist, Mr. Cameron has served on numerous nonprofit boards and currently is a member of the national Grantmakers in the Arts board. He has received honorary degrees from DePaul University in Chicago and American Conservatory Theatre in San Francisco, in addition to an MFA from the Yale School of Drama. In 2007, he was one of five recipients of the Distinguished Alumnus Award from UNC.

In addition to his not for profit work, he has lectured on theatre aboard the Queen Mary 2 as an Oxford Lecturer on three separate cruises, has spent 12 seasons as a panelist on the opera quiz feature on the Live from the Metropolitan broadcasts from New York, has twice ridden his bicycle from Minneapolis to Chicago to raise money for AIDS relief services, and served for three years as a member of the Tony Awards Nominating Committee.

Graduating seniors from the Art and Design departments present their individual thesis in the form of an exhibition as they prepare to graduate with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree and enter the into the professional artistic community. This exhibition will represent the culmination of each student’s education and experience at Cornish. A wide variety of technical and conceptual skills will be presented to the public in two buildings on the Cornish campus. Artists will be present at the lively, not-to-be-missed opening reception! The Exhibition Catalog can be viewed online.

“This exhibition is unique because it presents an entire body of work from each graduating senior, ranging from site-specific installations to interactive projects to new media pieces and works made by traditional techniques. It’s an opportunity for the graduates to express their creative voice to a large public audience for the first time, and a chance for visitors to preview the work of these new emerging artists.” -Jess Van Nostrand, Exhibitions Curator

Cornish College of the Arts BFA Art and Design 2010
Opening Reception: Friday, May 14, 5 – 9 pm

Art Exhibition:
May 15-29
9th Avenue Studios
427 9th Ave North

Design Exhibition:
May 15-22
Cornish Main Campus
1000 Lenora Street

Gallery hours: 12 pm – 5 pm, Monday – Saturday
Free and open to the public

Participating students included: Seth Tankus, Anna Kasabyan, Sara Porkalob, McKenzie Rush, Amy Mayes, Jake Ynzunza, N’Tasha Anders, Natalie Garcia, Jerrick Hoffer, Giuseppe Ribaudo and Lindsay Corbett.

First Segment:

Second Segment:

Students meet residents

Teacher David Taft and resident

Senior Clowns at Merrill Gardens

Mr. Frank and Audience

Audience Reaction

Junior class members of the Theater Department present their annual Shakespeare in the park production, featuring two works presented in Capitol Hill’s Volunteer Park. The performance will include Coriolanus as directed by John Farrage and Much Ado About Nothing, directed by Kerry Skalsky.

Free and open to the public.

Apr 23,24,25,30 at 3:30pm
May 1,2 at 3:30pm

Volunteer Park
1247 15th Avenue East
map & directions

Featuring a dynamic range of Young Artist, Adult Experiential and Studio classes, with a Who’s Who line-up of faculty – including comics artist Ellen Forney, art critic Jen Graves, screenwriter Lisa Halpern (Theater ‘87), Top Chef contestant Robin Leventhal, artist Joe Park (Art ‘88), renowned flutist Robert Dick, and Stranger Genius 2009 awardee in the visual arts, Jeffry Mitchell, among others –  Cornish is reaching further into the community and delving deeper into what it means to educate an artist and live an artful life.

Cornish is an inspiring environment with the philosophy that generative work is life-enhancing and sustaining, and that learning is truly a lifelong endeavor. People of all ages and skills explore creativity at the College every day.

“Cornish’s expanded summer programs reflect the institution’s ongoing commitment to providing quality arts education to the broader community and to the promotion of lifelong learning in the arts.”
 – Lois Harris, Provost, Cornish College of the Arts

The Adult Experiential Program offers an array of workshops taught by leading figures in the compelling creative landscapes of Seattle, while the Adult Studio Program offers classes in the visual arts taught by professional artists that will encourage participants to re-tool, re-engage, and re-think. These courses invite community members to continue their education in the arts, regardless of previous interest and experience.

“Part of Cornish’s mission is to serve as a focal point in the Puget Sound area for participation in the arts. This program will provide even more ways for Seattleites to make the arts a central part of their lives, and their presence will be a great addition to the vibrancy of campus life in the summer months.”
  – Sergei P. Tschernisch, President, Cornish College of the Arts

The Young Artist Programs have also been expanded and are geared towards pre-college students with a serious interest in the visual and performing arts. Courses are offered in Music, Dance, Art & Design.

Adult Experiential Program / July 12 – August 13

• Underneath: A Puget Sound Art Dredging with Jen Graves
• From Introspection to Action: Learning to take your snapshots from the virtual world into the real world with PCNW Executive Director Annie van Avery
• Waiting for Lightning to Strike: Or Taking the Leap of Faith to Write with Lisa Halpern
• The Art of Food with Becky Selengut, Langdon Cook, Clare Barboza, Molly Wizenberg, Shauna Ahern, Robin Leventhal, and Brandon Pettit

Adult Studio Program / July 6 – August 13

• Puppetry
• Portraiture: Appearance & Perception
• Print and Paper with a World View
• Life Drawing
• Lamp Shades & Transparent Paint
• Black and White Darkroom
• Intro to Book Arts

For a complete listing of summer programs, activities, and faculty members visit http://www.cornish.edu/summer

This award-winning and hugely popular musical satirizing human greed and folly is set in a society not dissimilar to our own, in which water is so scarce that residents have to pay to relieve themselves. Urinetown: The Musical takes a timely and gleefully mocking look at unthinking pursuit of profit and mismanagement of natural resources, enlivened by a score which sends up every musical from West Side Story to Les Miz. Produced by the Theater, Music, Dance, and Performance Production Departments.

Urinetown: The Musical, a musical-comedy satire by composer-lyricist Mark Hollmann and librettist-lyricist Greg Kotis, is one of the most critically and popularly successful musicals of the past decade. It satirizes capitalism, social irresponsibility, political hucksterism, bureaucracy, corporate mismanagement, and petty small town politics. It also is a satire of the Broadway musical as a form. The unconventional plotline shatters audience expectations of a pleasant ending.

Urinetown debuted at the New York International Fringe Festival, was produced Off-Broadway at the American Theatre for Actors and then moved to Broadway – opening at the Henry Miller Theatre on September 20, 2001. It closed on January 18, 2004, after 25 previews and 965 performances. Urinetown was nominated for 10 Tony Awards and won three: Best Director, Best Book of a Musical and Best Original Score. It also won two Obie Awards, three Outer Critics’ Circle Awards and two Lucille Lortel Awards. Productions of the musical have appeared in major cities throughout the world.

The musical satire is timely as the politics of water are becoming increasingly important in the modern world. The production will also be collaborating with HS faculty member Erica Howard, who is teaching a class this spring entitled Water in the Environment.

Directed by Timothy McCuen Piggee (Associate Professor, Theater)
Musical Direction by Roger Nelson (Professor, Music) and Dr. Natalie Lerch (Professor, Music)
Choreography by Kathryn Van Meter (Village Theatre)
Produced by Jan Hubert (Theater Staff)
Set Design by Rick Smith (Performance Production Staff)
Costume Design by Hannah Stern (Performance Production 2009)
Lighting Design by Brandon Chapman (PP 2011)
Sound Design by Justin Park (PP 2010) and Jared Stover (PP 2010)
A cast of 25 students from Theater, Music and Dance
A large design and technical staff of Performance Production students

Broadway Performance Hall
1625 Broadway

map & directions

Tickets: $10 general, $5 students, seniors & alumni