Stardust

This semester, the Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center will be filled with the beats of a rock musical, hybrid works and performances centered on the season’s continuing civil rights theme. Below are some of this semester’s highlights.

Stardust

Jan. 31 and Feb. 1

Visiting artist David Roussève, a Los Angeles-based dancer and choreographer, brings the world premiere of his piece, which features a black gay teen facing exclusion from his community. The teen is never onstage, but his story is told through tweets and postings projected on a screen.

Spring Awakening

Feb. 28 to March 8

The center performs musicals biennially, so the time was ripe for this semester’s production of the Tony Award-winning Broadway musical Spring Awakening. Co-director Brian MacDevitt said the show presents themes relevant to young people’s lives, including sexuality, teenage suicide, depression and identity.

MacDevitt described the show as a hybrid piece that emphasizes dance; co-Directors Sara Pearson and Patrik Widrig have owned dance company PearsonWidrig DanceTheater since 1987.

MacDevitt said that considering the show’s themes and pop score, it’s not a typical Broadway musical. In fact, he encourages people who hate musicals to see Spring Awakening.

“You can’t think of any other musical that’s as immediately about young people,” MacDevitt said. “I think that everybody will recognize something in themselves and in their lives in this.”

An Iliad

May 2 and 3

The first weekend of May features actor Denis O’Hare in this one-man show. Paul Brohan, the center’s director of artistic initiatives, said O’Hare is a storyteller who references culture and society while illuminating themes of war and heroism.

“Society needs heroes and warriors without necessarily equating that with war,” Brohan said of the show’s overarching theme.

Combat Paper Project

April 29 to May 1

The Combat Paper Project, a creative dialogue, is led by Drew Cameron, a U.S. Army veteran who takes veterans’ military fatigues and uniforms and turns them to paper, allowing veterans to then use that paper for art. Combat Paper Project’s website calls the papermaking process one that helps veterans “reclaim their uniforms as art and express their experiences with the military.” The three-day workshop in changing the uniforms to paper will be at Stamp Student Union’s Art and Learning Center.

Appalachian Spring

May 4

The UMD Symphony Orchestra performs Aaron Copland’s Appalachian Spring with choreography by Liz Lerman, a univeristy alumna and acclaimed choreographer. Orchestra members will move with Lerman’s choreography while playing. The music school is working to further the intersection between movement and music, said Bob Gibson, the school’s director. The orchestra also performed using Lerman’s choreography in May 2012.

Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992

May 3 to 10

Described on the center’s website as an “explosive piece of documentary theatre,” the play involves 40 people’s accounts in the aftermath of the acquittal of white police officers who beat Rodney King, who is black. Playwright Anna Deavere Smith interviewed about 300 people to capture multiple perspectives of the Los Angeles riots that followed the acquittal. The last play of the season concludes the year with thoughts about continuing civil rights issues in the United States.

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