Two exciting new musicals about The Big Apple will play together tonight, as The University of Oklahoma Weitzenhoffer School of Musical Theatre presents a double bill of Fred Ebb Award Winner Adam Gwon’s Ordinary Days and Robert Rokicki/Michael Ruby’s American Harmony Prize
Winning Love, NY. OU’s Paul Christman directs Ordinary Days; Shawn Churchman directs Love, NY.
The performance will take place at OU’s Reynolds Performing Arts Center at 7:30pm, culminating a week of workshops with the writers and featuring members of the junior and senior classes. Admission is free.
Throughout the week, Gwon, Rokicki and Ruby rehearsed with the students and took the opportunity to try new material, much of which will be presented for the first time at OU.
“It’s been an incredibly rewarding experience on so many levels,” says Michael Ruby, librettist/lyricist of Love, NY. “Paul, Shawn and everyone here at OU have been so generous. The students are amazingly talented and have accomplished so much. We’ve been thrilled to have the opportunity to work with them and together make new discoveries about our shows…and to have
a lot of fun in the process.”
For Ruby and Gwon, this is the second time they’ve worked with The University of Oklahoma, having workshopped their musical collaboration Ethan Frome in 2007.
Adam Gwon has been named one of "50 to Watch" by The Dramatist magazine and won the 2008 Fred Ebb Award for excellence in musical theater. Ordinary Days recently premiered at Pennsylvania Centre Stage, made its UK premiere at the Finborough Theatre in London, and was selected for the 2008 NAMT Festival of New Musicals. His other shows include Bernice Bobs Her
Hair (with librettist Julia Jordan and director Joe Calarco), and Ethan Frome. He's currently at work on commissions from Signature Theatre in Arlington, VA (as part of its American Musical Voices Project: The Next Generation), South Coast Repertory, and Broadway Across America.
The team of composer/lyricist Robert Rokicki and librettist/lyricist Michael Ruby won the 2009 American Harmony Prize for Love, NY, which was presented in concert at New World Stages in January. Rob Rokicki’s other credits include the sold-out Fringe hit Martha & Me and his songs have been featured in the star-studded “Where’s Darfur?” Benefit Concert at The Knitting Factory and at Upright LA Cabaret Theatre. Michael Ruby wrote the librettos to Ethan Frome, Swing for Victory (read at The York Theatre, to be presented regionally this summer) and the Christmas review the Greatest Holiday Musical...Ever!
