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Celebrate the Anniversary of SCHOOLHOUSE ROCK with WE WILL SCHOOLHOUSE ROCK YOU!

By: Mar. 19, 2018
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Celebrate the Anniversary of SCHOOLHOUSE ROCK with WE WILL SCHOOLHOUSE ROCK YOU!  Image

WE WILL SCHOOLHOUSE ROCK YOU!, a concert celebrating the 45th Anniversary of Schoolhouse Rock! will play The Laurie Beechman Theater in The West Bank Café, 407 W 42nd Street (at 9th Avenue), New York, NY 10036 on Sunday, May 6th for two shows at 7:00pm & 9:30pm. The evening will feature everyone's Schoolhouse Rock! favorites including "Conjunction Junction", "I'm Just A Bill", "Interplanet Janet", "Three Is A Magic Number" and "Interjections!", taking you back to Saturday mornings with a never-ending bowl of cereal and all the Pop Rocks you could handle.

Sung by award-winning artists of stage and screen, the evening will star Michael "You're Gonna Hate This" Holland (multi-award-winning performer & composer Hurricane, You're Gonna HATE This), New York's favorite Know-It-All Rob Maitner (Urinetown, Fairy Tales, FreakMe), "The Chocolate Dreamboat" Clifton Oliver (The Lion King, Wicked, In The Heights), "Loud Mouth" Lucia Spina (Kinky Boots, Legally Blonde, Les Miserables), Gabrielle "Jazz Hands" Stravelli (MAC & Bistro Award Winner, US State Department Jazz Ambassador), and voted Most Fun At Prom, 10-time MAC Award Winning cabaret artist Lennie Watts.

Hosted by Rob Maitner, Musical Direction Michael Holland, and Directed by Lucia Spina, tickets are $25-40 plus $20 food/beverage minimum. Tickets can be purchased at www.westbankcafe.com/laurie-beechman-theatre.

Director Spina's connection goes back to 1999 on the second national tour of Schoolhouse Rock Live! and was an original cast member of Schoolhouse Rock Live Too!, which opened in 2000 at The Theater Building in Chicago, as well as touring in a condensed version of the original production to Chicago area schools for many years. She went into acting because she was told there would be no math. In walked Schoolhouse Rock Live! to her life and her math skills have never been the same.

First airing on January 6, 1973, the musical segments were conceived by David McCall whose son couldn't remember his multiplication tables, but knew all the lyrics to popular songs. McCall enlisted copywriter & jazz pianist George Newall, jazz bebop legend Bob Dorough, and illustrator Tom Yohe in creating Schoolhouse Rock! Later on, jazz great Dave Frishberg, Broadway composer Lynn Ahrens (currently represented on Broadway with Once On This Island and Anastasia), and others were brought on to compose more tunes. The songs featured performances by Dororugh, Ahrens, jazz vocalist and pianist Blossom Dearie, bebop trumpeter, singer, and actor Jack Sheldon, Grady Tate, Essra Mohawk and more.

In 1993, Schoolhouse Rock Live!, a musical theater adaptation of the animated series was created by Scott Ferguson, Kyle Hall, and George Keating and opened at Chicago's Cabaret Voltaire, eventually moving Off-Broadway in 1995 at The Atlantic Theater, with national tours following in 1998.



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