Dance Commons^™

Chicago, Otterbein University Theatre And Dance Department

2019-2020 Season

Set in Jazz-age Chicago, the musical is based on a 1926 play of the same name by reporter Maurine Dallas Watkins about actual criminals and crimes she reported on. The story is a satire on corruption in the administration of criminal justice and the concept of the "celebrity criminal". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_(musical)

Smoke On The Mountain, Otterbein University Department Of Theatre And Dance

2019 Summer Theatre

n this delightful tale of the Sanders Family Singers, the audience is invited to go back to 1938 and pull up a pew for an evening of more than two dozen songs, many of them vintage pop hymns. The more-or-less devout members of the family don’t just sing, but also have hilarious stories, which are delivered despite the mild protestations of the Reverend Oglethorpe.

Dance 2018: Gloriously Grimm, Otterbein University Theatre And Dance Department

2018-2019 Season

No abstract provided.

The Launch 2018: A Senior Cabaret, Otterbein University Theatre And Dance Department

2018-2019 Season

The senior Acting and Musical Theatre Majors will take their final bows on the Fritsche Theatre stage in this 90 minute program of songs, dance, scenes, and monologues. See performances from some the students' favorite productions, including Thoroughly Modern Millie, Dreamgirls, Brighton Beach Memoirs, Rumors, My Fair Lady, and Hamilton!

Arcadia, Otterbein University Theatre And Dance Department

1998-1999 Season

The Underlying theme throughout the show is Classicism vs. Romanticism. The Classic ideals of balance and intellect, seen in Greek Geometry and the ordered universe, become challenged by the emotion and chaos of the Romantic World. The tensions that two completely conflicting philosophies create drive Arcadia forward, making a potentially academic play fun and exciting to watch.

Macbeth...The Tragedy Of, Otterbein University Theatre And Dance Department

2018-2019 Season

A brave Scottish general named Macbeth receives a prophecy from a trio of witches that one day he will become King of Scotland. Consumed by ambition and spurred to action by his wife, Macbeth murders King Duncan and takes the Scottish throne for himself. He is then wracked with guilt and paranoia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macbeth

Big Fish, Otterbein University Theatre And Dance Department

2018-2019 Season

When Edward Bloom becomes ill, his son, William, travels to be with him. William has a strained relationship with Edward because his father has always told exaggerated stories about his life, and William thinks he's never really told the truth. Even on his deathbed, Edward recounts fantastical anecdotes. When William, who is a journalist, starts to investigate his father's tales, he begins to understand the man and his penchant for storytelling.

The Taming Of The Shrew, Otterbein University Theatre And Dance Department

1985-1986 Season

A ribald, raucous, rowdy look at the eternal “battle of the sexes.” The beautiful Catherine has acquired a reputation as “Kate the Curst” because she apparently does not like the kind of potential suitors encouraged by her father. Enter the swashbuckling but roguish adventurer, Petruchio, who wants both Catherine and her dowry. The father happily agrees to the match and the resulting “battle” ends up as one of Shakespeare's most famous love matches.

Snoopy!, Otterbein University Theatre And Dance Department

2018 Summer Theatre

The musical sequel to YOU’RE A GOOD MAN, CHARLIE BROWN – deserves each of its three exclamation points. Based on the beloved Peanuts comic strip by Charles Schulz, the show sparkles with wit and warmth as it depicts life as seen through the eyes of Schulz’s unforgettable characters.

Thoroughly Modern Millie, Otterbein University Theatre And Dance Department

2017-2018 Season

The year was 1922 and to live in Manhattan meant, for many, an era of wild optimism, carefree abandonment of antiquated social constraints and for women, unprecedented advancement in how they were perceived by those around them. Everything was lovely and in this age of liberated sensibilities, our heroine, Millie Dillmount enters with just such a need to rewrite her personal narrative. Thoroughly Modern Millie is, to me, a valentine to optimism and a love letter to love itself.

Thom C. Warren, Director

Adding Machine: A Musical, Otterbein University Department Of Theatre And Dance

2017-2018 Season

Mr. Zero is the eternal "little man," shallow yet possessing some dignity, who murders his boss when he learns that, after twenty-five years of being a bookkeeper, he is to be replaced by an adding machine. Condemned to death despite his piteous stream-of-consciousness appeal to the jury, he is executed and appears next in the Elysian Fields, where he meets and enjoys a brief idyll with Daisy, his deceased co-worker, whose love he had secretly desired.

http://www.guidetomusicaltheatre.com/shows_a/addingmachine.html

Damn Yankees, Otterbein University Theatre And Dance Department

2016-2017 Season

The story is a modern retelling of the Faust legend set during the 1950s in Washington, D.C., during a time when the New York Yankees dominated Major League Baseball. It is based on Wallop's novel The Year the Yankees Lost the Pennant.

Top Girls, Otterbein University Theatre And Dance Department

2016-2017 Season

Top Girls is a 1982 play by Caryl Churchill. It is about a woman named Marlene, a career-driven woman who is only interested in women's success in business. In the famous opening scene, she hosts a dinner party for a group of famous women from history. As the play unfolds we find Marlene has left her 'poor' life, and illegitimate child with her sister Joyce, in order to tread the path to 'success'. The play is contemporary and examines the role of women in society and what being a successful woman means.

The Launch: A Senior Cabaret, Otterbein University Theatre And Dance Department

2016-2017 Season

A showcase of performances by seniors with special guest Lindsay Nicole Chanbers '02

Dance 2016: The Goddess, Otterbein University Theatre And Dance Department

2016-2017 Season

No abstract provided.

The Crucible, Otterbein University Theatre And Dance Department

2016-2017 Season

The Crucible is a 1953 play by American playwright Arthur Miller. It is a dramatized and partially fictionalized story of the Salem witch trials that took place in the Massachusetts Bay Colony during 1692/93. Miller wrote the play as an allegory for McCarthyism, when the United States government persecuted people accused of being communists. _{^{https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Crucible}}

The Addams Family, Otterbein University Theatre And Dance Department

2016-2017 Season

We have drawn inspiration for this rendering of The Addams Family from Charles Addams' original cartoons. We were fascinated by the challenge of taking a two dimensional world and extending it into three dimensional reality.

Brighton Beach Memoirs, Otterbein University Theatre And Dance

2016 Summer Theatre

Brighton Beach Memoirs is the first play in Neil Simon's semi-autobiographical comedic Eugene trilogy, which also includes Biloxi Blues and Broadway Bound. The story of Brighton Beach Memoirs follows a 15-year-old boy named Eugene Jerome as he grows up in 1937 Brooklyn. stageagent.com/shows/play/2119/brighton-beach-memoirs

Fiddler On The Roof, Otterbein University Theatre And Dance Department

2015-2016 Season

At the beginning of the twentieth century, Jews and Orthodox Christians live in the little village of Anatevka in the pre-revolutionary Russia of the Czars. Among the traditions of the Jewish community, the matchmaker arranges the match and the father approves it. The milkman Reb Tevye is a poor man that has been married for twenty-five years with Golde and they have five daughters. When the local matchmaker Yente arranges the match between his older daughter Tzeitel and the old widow butcher Lazar Wolf, Tevye agrees with the wedding. However Tzeitel is in love with the poor tailor Motel Kamzoil …

Middletown, Otterbein University Theatre And Dance Department

2014-2015 Season

Will Eno’s Middletown, or maybe more appropriately, Everytown, is a very insightful look at the alienation, loneliness and subtle despair that lives at the edges of contemporary life. It also examines the accumulation, and effects, of the small and seemingly insignificant moments of our lives, that in an instant can change our lives.

Rent, Otterbein University Theatre And Dance Department

2015-2016 Season

This musical, set at the dawn of the 1990s, follows a group of New Yorkers as they struggle with their careers, love lives and the effects of the AIDS epidemic on their community. Mark,an aspiring filmmaker, and Roger (Adam Pascal), an HIV-positive musician, scramble for money to pay rent to their landlord and former roommate, Benny (Taye Diggs). Meanwhile, their friend Tom (Jesse L. Martin), a professor, has fallen for Angel (Wilson Jermaine Heredia), who is slowly dying of AIDS. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0294870/plotsummary

2015 - 2016 Season Brochure, Otterbein University Department Of Theatre And Dance

Theatre and Dance Annual Brochures

Annual promotional piece of the upcoming season's shows.

Into The Woods, Otterbein University Theatre And Dance Department

2014-2015 Season

Into the Woods is a musical with music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim and book by James Lapine. The musical intertwines the plots of several Brothers Griimm and Charles Perrault fairy tales, exploring the consequences of the characters' wishes and quests. The main characters are taken from "Little Red Riding Hood,", "Jack and the Beanstalk", "Rapunzel", and "Cinderella", as well as several others. The musical is tied together by a story involving a childless baker and his wife and their quest to begin a family (the original beginning of The Grimm Brothers' Rapunzel), their interaction with a witch who has …

The Greeks: The Murders, Otterbein University Theatre And Dance Department

2014-2015 Season

No abstract provided.

Sweet Charity, Otterbein University Theatre And Dance Department

2014-2015 Season

Charity Hope Valentine always tries to look on the bright side of life, despite working in a rundown dance hall and contending with a seemingly endless run of bad dates. Determined to find love, Charity falls for suave actor Vittorio Vidal, but their romance is all too brief. However, when Charity finds herself stuck in an elevator with the reserved Oscar Lindquist, it turns out that she may have finally met her match.

2014 - 2015 Season Brochure, Otterbein University Department Of Theatre And Dance

Theatre and Dance Annual Brochures

Annual promotional piece of the upcoming season's shows.

The Full Monty, Otterbein University Theatre And Dance Department

2013-2014 Season

Six unemployed steelworkers in Buffalo, New York are miserable. They have no cash and no prospects. Meanwhile, they catch their wives and other women going crazy over male strippers. The six men then set out to make some quick cash showing off their "real man" bodies by becoming a team of male strippers. As the guys work through their fears, self-consciousness and anxieties they find strength as a group and overcome their inner demons.

https://stageagent.com/shows/musical/2441/the-full-monty

The Importance Of Being Earnest (2014), Otterbein University Theatre And Dance Department

2013-2014 Season

The Importance of Being Earnest, A Trivial Comedy for Serious People is a play by Oscar Wilde. It's the story of two bachelors, John 'Jack' Worthing and Algernon 'Algy' Moncrieff, who create alter egos named Ernest to escape their tiresome lives. www.importanceofbeingearnest.co.uk/synopsis/

Dance 2013: Once Again, Otterbein University Theatre And Dance Department

2013-2014 Season

No abstract provided.

Speed-The-Plow, Otterbein University Theatre And Dance Department

2013-2014 Season

Speed-the-Plow is another of Mamet's business plays, this one exploring the relationship between business and art. Bobby and Charlie are film producers who are considering greenlighting the script for a prison buddy movie that they believe will be a huge blockbuster. Bobby has been reading an apocalyptically spiritual novel that has deep meaning, but Charlie points out that this book would never make a great movie. After the temp, Karen, leaves the office, Charlie bets Bobby that he cannot get her into bed. When she returns, Bobby asks her to read the novel and give him her thoughts later. That …