STAGE STARS SET TO SHINE DURING MUSICAL
THEATRE LAB PERFORMANCE AT UH
Broadway legend Stuart Ostrow has spent the fall semester grooming
the next generation of stage stars. Now, he’s ready to watch
them shine in front of live audiences.
Students in Ostrow’s Musical Theatre Lab at the University
of Houston will present excerpts from three new musicals at 8 p.m.
Dec. 1 – 2 in UH’s Jose Quintero Lab Theatre. Performances
are free and open to the public.
Selections will include scenes and songs from musical adaptations
of Marcel Ayme’s “The Walker Through the Walls,”
Mark Twain’s “The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg”
and John Patrick Shanley’s “Doubt.”
Offered through UH’s School of Theatre & Dance, the Musical
Theatre Lab is composed of student composers, lyricists, book writers,
directors, producers, choreographers and designers, who were all
hand-picked by Tony award winner and UH Distinguished University
Professor of Theater Ostrow.
Students were split up into three teams and given the challenge
of composing musicals based on works of literature.
“The greatest questions a musical dramatist must answer are:
Does the story I am telling sing? Is the subject sufficiently off
the ground to compel the heightened emotion of bursting into song?
Will a song add a deeper understanding of character or situation?,”
Ostrow said.
Ostrow founded the Musical Theatre Lab in 1973 at St. Clement’s
Church in New York City. It was later developed at the Kennedy Center
and Harvard College before it arrived at UH in 1995. During its
stay in New York, the lab hosted workshops featuring the talents
of Arthur Miller, Carol King and Robert Wilson.
Ostrow received Tony awards for “1776” as Best Musical
in 1969 and “M. Butterfly” as Best Play in 1988. He
has also produced Tony nominees “Pippin” and “The
Apple Tree,” in which he collaborated with regular UH Children’s
Theatre Festival contributor Jerry Bock, Bob Fosse, Stephen Schwartz
and Sheldon Harnick .
WHAT: Stuart Ostrow’s
Musical Theatre Lab
WHEN: 8 p.m., Friday, Dec. 1
– Saturday, Dec. 2
WHERE: Jose Quintero Lab Theatre in the
Cynthia Woods Mitchell Center for the Arts at UH
WHO: University of Houston
School of Theatre & Dance
For more information about UH visit
the universitys Newsroom at www.uh.edu/admin/media/newsroom.
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