Dance Commons^™

Urinetown: The Musical, Otterbein Theatre And Dance Department

2025-2026 Season Productions

No abstract provided.

Dames At Sea, Otterbein Theatre And Dance Department

2025 Summer Theatre

No abstract provided.

Always... Patsy Cline, Otterbein Theatre And Dance Department

2025 Summer Theatre

No abstract provided.

Footloose: The Musical, Otterbein Theatre And Dance Department

2024-2025 Season Productions

No abstract provided.

Natasha, Pierre, & The Great Comet Of 1812, Otterbein Theatre And Dance Department

2024-2025 Season Productions

No abstract provided.

Beehive: The '60s Musical, Otterbein Theatre And Dance Department

2024 Summer Theatre

No abstract provided.

It's A Wonderful Life: A Live Radio Play, Otterbein Theatre And Dance Department

2024 Summer Theatre

No abstract provided.

Forever Plaid, Otterbein Theatre And Dance Department

2024 Summer Theatre

No abstract provided.

Needs Salt, Joshua Lang

Dance (MFA) Theses

Researcher Joshua Lang investigates the development of the Eden narrative in western culture. Near the beginning of the book of Genesis, the Eden narrative provides a lens to culturally significant elements of early Hebrew culture. Genesis illustrates early Hebrew culture’s relationship with the natural world, sex, sin, judgment, and death. Similarly, John Milton’s retelling of the narrative in Paradise Lost divulges information about the culture that Milton lived in, as well as a great deal about the author himself. Milton’s blindness, and his opinions on heteronormative marriage, Protestantism, sin, judgment, and death are evident in the text. In Paradise Lost …

The Launch 2020: A Senior Cabaret, Otterbein Theatre And Dance Department

2020-2021 Season

No abstract provided.

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.

Embodied Nostalgia: Early Twentieth Century Social Dance And U.S. Musical Theatre, Phoebe Rumsey

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In this dissertation, I claim the collective emotional connections and historical explorations characteristic of musical theatre constitute a nostalgic impulse dramaturgically inherent in the form. In my intervention in the link between nostalgia and musical theatre, I look to an area underrepresented in musical theatre scholarship: social dance. Through case studies that focus specifically on how social dance in musical theatre brings forth the dancer on stage as a site of embodied history, cultural memory, and nostalgia, I ask what social dance is doing in musical theatre and how the dancing body functions as a catalyst for nostalgic thinking for …

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

Dance Concert: Move Me, Otterbein University Department Of Theatre And Dance

2017-2018 Season

No abstract provided.

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