StudentsLive and Japanese Girl Group 'AKB48' Announce Final Broadway Showcase of FROM TOKYO TO BROADWAY at Pearl Studios, 11/14

StudentsLive and Japanese Girl Group AKB48 have announced the final Broadway Showcase of FROM TOKYO TO BROADWAY as part of the 2012 Passport to Broadway: Japan program.

StudentsLive- The Premiere Broadway Education Company offers international and domestic students of all ages the opportunity to experience, first hand, the best live, Broadway interactive theater education programs, taught by the best, highly trained Broadway specialists, our country has to offer. It allows these young students to experience the intensive training of a professional, successful and highly disciplined Broadway Artist and the myriad skills required in collaboration, interrelation, communication and human exploration. The goals are to expand and deepen students understanding and familiarity with Broadway. Through challenging music, dance, acting and “behind the scenes” studies physically, verbally and intuitively, we prepare them to be highly competitive in whatever career they choose to pursue.

AKB48 (read "A.K.B. Forty-eight") is a Japanese girl group. It has achieved such popularity in Japan that it has been characterized as a social phenomenon. The group has 67 members, ranging in age from early teens to mid-20s. Produced by Yasushi Akimoto, it is one of the highest-earning musical acts in the world, with 2011 record sales of over $200 million in Japan alone.

Featuring 6 members of AKB48- the pop sensation from Japan, the group will be studying and performing alongside Broadway Guest Artists Tyrick Wiltez Jones (Hairspray), Angel May Reed (Rock of Ages), Patricia Durante (The Secret Garden) and 10 American Musical Theatre Students performing a Customized Musical Showcase that includes a medley of Broadway-style classical and contemporary show numbers that includes "I Won't Have to Anymore" by Jonathan Reid Gealt and "Ready" by Joey Contreras tied together with an original book entitled: “From Tokyo to Broadway”.

Passport to Broadway Creative Team: Amy Weinstein- Director/President of StudentsLive (Former Education Director for Tony Randall’s National Actors Theatre), Michael Sansonia- Musical Director (Pump Boys and Dinettes), & Michael Baxter- Choreographer (Resident Choreographer- St. Louis MUNY)

The showcase will take place on Wednesday, November 14, 2012, from 7:00-8:30PM . The show runs approximately25 minutes. Talk Backs: Begin at 7:45pm and end at 8:30pm. It all takes place at PEARL STUDIOS (519 8th Avenue between 35th and 36th Streets). No photography or video of any kind is permitted at the final showcase. Invitation Only.

StudentsLive's mission is to create highly effective, interactive and innovative workshops and new audience development programs in partnership with the best theater our country has to offer: Broadway. We enrich audiences’ access to and understanding of live theatre; creating and inspiring newer, better and wider audiences and artists alike; connecting and providing deeply engaging, experiential visits to Broadway shows by offering the highest quality education programming and services. We began partnering with producers to develop future audiences of critical thinkers who would return time and again to seek out quality theatre, and instill appreciation and love for the arts at an early age. Since 2000, StudentsLive’s curriculum-based programs have attracted over 100,000 new audiences from the widest range of cultural, ethnic and socioeconomic backgrounds.

StudentsLive supports alternative learning, cross cultural and interdisciplinary opportunities for a wide range of new audiences and creating, developing, managing and implementing interactive Broadway Educational Workshops and Materials for support in classrooms worldwide. StudentsLive trains, hires, and organizes teams of Broadway artists and professionals to serve each audience’s needs, and our programs enable a new generation of audiences to make the arts a permanent part of their lives in ways in which they can deeply explore its value, not just fill up a seats.

Since 2000, StudentsLive’s Award-Winning live interactive education programming have attracted over 100,000 participants from as far away as Guam, The UK, Italy, and from all across the United States. The League of American Theatres and Producers and Theatre Development Fund have awarded StudentsLive grants six years in a row for Outstanding Education Programs on Broadway. StudentsLive’s programs are now attracting adult groups and tour internationally in collaboration with presenters all across the world.

Guest Speakers and workshop participants at our high profile Exclusive Student Matinees and Workshops on Broadway have included: Judge Judy - Geraldine Ferraro - Johnnie Cochran - Tommy Hilfiger - Lee Gifford - Susan Lucci - George Hamilton Reba McEntire - Chazz Palminteri - Bernadette Peters - Joey Fatone - Scary Spice.

StudentsLive’s programs have been recognized as vital to New York City’s arts and education initiatives by Mayors Michael Bloomberg and Rudolph Giuliani, and have received letters of support and praise from Former President Bill Clinton and Secretary of State Hilary Clinton.

Programs have also been covered and written about in national and local print and electronic media by The New York Times, The Jane Pauley Show, Court TV, Variety, The Daily News, The New York Post, ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox, UPN, and NY1.

Past/current shows and select Broadway partnerships have included a wide range of National Actors Theatre Productions including The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui starring Al Pacino and Judgment at Nuremberg starring Maximillian Schell, Broadway Productions of A Class Act, Annie Get Your Gun, The Civil War, Def Poetry Jam, The Exonerated, Metamorphoses, Flower Drum Song, Baz Lurhman’s La Boheme, I Am My Own Wife, Movin’ Out, Peter Pan (National Tour with Cathy Rigby), Wonderful Town, Seussical, Little Women: The Musical, Cookin’, Sweet Charity, Avenue Q, The Phantom of the Opera, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels (National Tour, Broadway League Grant 2006), Rent, Grease, Spring Awakening (Broadway League Grant 2007), Chicago, In the Heights, Wicked (Broadway and 2013 National Tour productions) & Zarkana.

For more information, call (212) 220-6000, email info@studentslive.net or visit www.passporttobroadway.com.

Pictured: AKB48 performing at Nokia Theatre, Los Angeles, in July 2010.

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