Backstage at BU: Tonight, Tonight
A five-part series on the year in drama
Click on the slide show above to listen to students talk about performing in West Side Story.
Boston University loves drama, from the moodiness of Anton Chekhov to the humor of George Bernard Shaw. The GRS Creative Writing Program’s elite playwriting program has produced some of today’s most successful young playwrights, such as Ronan Noone (GRS’01) and Melinda Lopez (GRS’00), and benefited from decades of partnership with BU’s Boston Playwrights’ Theatre, founded by Derek Walcott, Nobel Prize winning poet and a BU professor, and the Huntington Theatre Company, in residence at Boston University. The 25-year relationship between BU and the Huntington has given one of the country’s best professional companies a performance space and offered BU students an opportunity for hands-on experience.
This week BU Today looks at five shows produced at Boston University in 2006 and 2007, ranging from workshops at the College of Fine Arts to full-scale productions by the Huntington. Click here to see “Making Brendan: Ronan Noone on the Process and the Play.” Click here to see “The Popular Puccini: La Bohème — America’s Favorite Opera — at BU Theatre.” Click here to see “Into The Cherry Orchard: Student Actors Step Up to BU’s Huntington Stage.” Check back tomorrow for “Interplay: Two Actors Talk about Mauritius.”
Tonight, Tonight: West Side Story Turns 50 at Tsai
In honor of the 50th anniversary of the musical West Side Story, Jamie Bernstein, daughter of composer Leonard Bernstein, made her father’s life and work come alive for the BU community at the College of Arts and Sciences on March 23. Bernstein read from her father’s letters, offered an analysis of his score, and played sound clips as a preface to an 8 p.m. performance of West Side Story by the student group On Broadway, Boston University’s musical theater company.
Directed by Kate Joyce (CAS’07), the On Broadway rendition featured a cast of 32 and a full orchestra comprised of instrumental performance students as well as professional musicians, under the direction of graduate student Brett Abigana (CFA’07).
“Tonight, Tonight” originally appeared on BU Today in March 2007.