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Health & Fitness

A Spot of Free Entertainment

How can you refuse a little free entertainment?

 

Why shell out hundreds of dollars to see the same old musical when you can drop in to the Out of the Box Festival at Notre Dame de Namur University for free and experience something you won't get anywhere else?

I'm challenging you to go out on a limb like the students in the Department of Music and Vocal Arts have and spend a couple hours soaking up some fabulous talent with a unique twist.

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This is the second Out of the Box Festival the department has put on — last year I had the pleasure of putting together my own project, "Cleopatra," for the first festival, in which I reworked Handel's opera "Giulio Cesare" into a "play with music" about the powerful queen's manipulative prowess, enhanced with a couple of arias from the opera as well as some musical theatre tunes, and — yes — some rock.

Now I'm on the other side, singing a contralto role in Gian Carlo Menotti's "The Old Maid and the Thief," the first "radio opera." It was aired on NBC Radio in 1939, but since then, it has been primarily performed in the same fashion as most operas, with a stage and a set.

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Here's where "out of the box" comes in. Our director, MFA student Christine Jarc, has made our set the radio studio of 1939, and the audience the "live studio audience."

It's a little out of the box for me too because I play the old maid, Miss Todd, and I'm only 24! But I'm absolutely thrilled because this is my first lead role in an opera (excluding a workshop I participated in of a few scenes from Evan Mack's "Angel of the Amazon"), and the part of Miss Todd is so colorful and provides so many opportunities to play. A singer's dream come true.

The other productions in the festival promise to be fabulous as well. "The Women (...and The Men)" explores the attitudes toward the role of women in the 1930s, with music by Kern, Porter and Rodgers, with scenes from Shaw and Luce. "By Bohmler" is a retrospective of Craig Bohmler's work (he will be present at performances). "Fallings" is an original music theatre piece currently being written by faculty member Joel Friedman - the festival will feature a few scenes.

If you want to go:

“The Old Maid and the Thief” and “The Women (...and The Men)”
April 13 at 7:30 p.m.
April 14 at 2 p.m.

“By Bohmler”
April 20 and 21 at 7:30 p.m.

“Fallings”
April 21 at 7:30 p.m.
April 22 at 2 p.m.

All performances are in Taube Center at Notre Dame de Namur University (Taube Center is the small chapel-like building at the front of campus).

I hope to see you there. :)

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