College Center

For nearly 60 years, the University of Minnesota has been presenting a summer melodrama on a docked showboat on the Mississippi River, currently across from downtown St. Paul. The Minnesota Centennial Showboat was christened in 1958, as those who know their Minnesota history could guess. The first show was UNDER THE GASLIGHT, which returns this summer for their last season at the Showboat. While this is only the second U of M show I've seen at the Showboat, I'm sad that it was my last. The creative team includes some of the top talent in town, and the cast is chock-full of talented young people that are the future of theater in this town. The melodrama is a fun, entertaining, and little-seen genre that encourages the audience to 'vocalize appropriately.' The Showboat is a unique and charming venue, and I hope that someone puts it to good use. Whether you've seen dozens of Showboat melodramas, or none, it would behoove you to board the Showboat one last time for this uniquely pleasing theatrical experience.

Unlike Anything Goes or some other lighter summer shows set on ships, Christina Anderson's phenomenal new play, pen/man/ship, currently running at the Contemporary American Theater Festival, is a stunningly crafted and unforgettable voyage that confronts modern controversial issues, such as race, religion and gender, in an intriguing historical context.

Like so many girls her age, little Dorothy Gale of Kansas dreams of what lies over the rainbow. One day a twister hits her farm and carries her away over the rainbow to another world. Come join Dorothy, the Scarecrow, the Tinman, the Cowardly Lion and Toto as they travel the universe of Dorothy's imagination. You do not want to miss this special engagement! This family fun show promises to have something for everyone!

North Carolina State University is internationally known for its engineering and technology programs as well as its veterinary hospital. None of these disciplines is typically associated with the arts, but NC State puts great effort into developing its arts programs, especially theatre.

As part of its popular Summertime Saturday Puppet Shows for family audiences by UConn Puppet Arts students, the Ballard Institute and Museum of Puppetry at the University of Connecticut will present The Wonderful World of Wonder by UConn Puppet Arts MFA student Gavin Cummins and Philadelphia-based artist and musician Gwendolyn Rooker onSaturday, July 16 at 11 a.m. and 2 p.m., at the Ballard Institute Theater located at 1 Royce Circle, Storrs, CT.

SONGS FOR A NEW WORLD delivered an engaging 85 minutes of musical theatre, managing to explore a clear thesis while doing so. Like some of the musicals presented at the Student Arts Festival over the past few years, it raised the bar of what can be accomplished on this platform in this genre.

Santa Clara University's Department of Theatre and Dance announced today the full casting and creative creative team for the upcoming production of CHICAGO.  BroadwayWorld has a first look at the cast in action below!

BroadwayWorld.com is currently seeking talented theater enthusiasts to blog on their school productions on a college, high school, middle school, and even elementary school level!

The acclaimed university's children's theatre double feature explores the wide variety of possibilities for family entertainment.

Television and theater star Kristin Chenoweth was joined onstage by eight ?Otterbein University students to sing back-up on a few songs, during Chenoweth's performance at the Palace Theatre in Columbus.

Claude-Michel Schonberg has been named as the next Cameron Mackintosh Visiting Professor of Contemporary Theatre, based at St Catherine's College at the University of Oxford.  He will succeed Simon Russell Beale in October 2016.

The University of Wisconsin - Stevens Point Department of Theatre and Dance is staging DOGFIGHT. With an intimate setting, exceptional acting, and a well-designed production, anyone (who is old enough, comfortable with stage violence, has lungs that readily accept fog, and appreciates a good curse word) will enjoy the show.

The Syracuse University Department of Drama packs three musicals, a wild comedy, a classic Shaw, and a never-before-produced contemporary comedy into a season full of surprises and infrequently performed theatrical gems. Beginning with the musical Nine, the 2016/2017 season includes Laura and the Sea, Disney and Cameron Mackintosh's Mary Poppins (co-produced with Syracuse Stage), The King Stag, Major Barbara, and From Berlin to Broadway With Kurt Weill: A Musical Voyage. 

The Sarofim School of Fine Arts Department of Theatre presents DEAD MAN WALKING at the creative theatre in the round stage known as Jesse H. and Mary Gibbs Jones Theater. Located in the heart of Georgetown, Texas and more specifically, Southwestern University, director Kathleen Juhl gathers students to tell a tale of a very unlikable young man watching the clock of his life run out. Set in 1970's Louisiana, the audience is transported through the stories of intolerance rather than scenery. Opening with a bare stage, some chairs, and a simple platform, the play begins with Sister Helen Prejean (played my Ally Oliphint) curious and nonjudgemental about her questionable surroundings in "the projects". Soon, she is asked by a local priest to visit a man on death row, and with some hesitation, she goes against the advice of her peers and ventures to the prison. With the bars and jail represented through creative cross lighting and distance, Matthew Poncelet (played by Dillon Betros) awaits, like a lion waiting for prey. The young man facing the last week of his life comes alive in his berating and tempting of Sister Prejean to abandon him through his brutish and ignorant dialogue. This stands in contrast with Sister Prejean's attempts to  humanize a convicted murderer and rapist, as she is on a mission of religious guidance and tolerance, and not wanting to pass judgement.

AMERICAN IDIOT at Birmingham-Southern College is edgy, gritty and all that you want it to be. BSC took a risk doing a current and potentially controversial show and for students of art, a risk like that is almost always worth it.

When I first heard that a Catholic college, Saint Mary's College to be exact, was putting on the musical Chicago, I was skeptical. Knowing that Chicago is quite the risque musical with all types of salacious subject matter, I wasn't quite sure how they were going to pull it off. Well, let me be blunt, Saint Mary's did not look very Catholic this past Saturday night when I saw the second showing of the musical.

Thursday April 14th, McCain Auditorium of Kansas State University hosted the National tour of Ragtime directed and choreographed by Marcia Milgrom Dodge and produced by Phoenix Entertainment.

The Ohio State Department of Theatre's final main-stage production of the 2015-16 season invites audiences into a world of literary creativity.

Broadway Academy of Performing, a kid's theatre camp hosted by Newman University Theatre Department, is now accepting registrations. The camp dates will be June 11th through 18th at Newman University in Wichita, KS

BroadwayWorld.com is currently seeking talented theater enthusiasts to blog on their school productions on a college, high school, middle school, and even elementary school level!

Moreau Center for the Arts presents CHICAGO, April 15-17 at the O'Laughlin Auditorium.  Tickets are $13 for adults, $12 for senior citizens, $10 for SMC/ND/HCC Faculty and Staff, and $8 for SMC/ND/HCC Students.

This Spring, Torrey Theatre of Biola Univeristy is proud to present its production of Sophocles' Antigone! Modernised to be set in an underground safe house in the late 20th century during a brutal civil war, Antigone raises timeless questions about political and religious power, duty, and civil disobedience. Join us as we seek to interpret this great work of literature for our campus and community.

Musical theater students at the University of Alabama at Birmingham are exploring a story of teenagers discovering the inner and outer tumults of sexuality in the controversial Tony Award-winning play "Spring Awakening."  Check out a first look at the cast in action below!

Fiddler on the Roof is a musical with music by Jerry Bock, lyrics by Sheldon Harnick, and book by Joseph Stein, set in the Pale of Settlement of Imperial Russia in 1905. It is based on Tevye and his Daughters (or Tevye the Dairyman) and other tales by Sholem Aleichem. The story centers on Tevye, the father of five daughters, and his attempts to maintain his Jewish religious and cultural traditions as outside influences encroach upon the family's lives. He must cope both with the strong-willed actions of his three older daughters, who wish to marry for love - each one's choice of a husband moves further away from the customs of his faith - and with the edict of the Tsar that evicts the Jews from their village.

In a variety of pieces ranging from intimate dances performed to a still, silent room to contemporary choreography paired with unconventional soundtracks and grooving rhythms, the Ohio State Department of Dance's "Spring Dance Concert" explored the connection that binds movement and sound.