Productions 2019-20
Dear Friends, Colleagues and Students,
The Theatre and Dance Department is once again very excited to showcase a well-rounded season of performances here at Cal Poly this academic year.
The main stage productions continue to be key components in our educational mission, which is to provide opportunity and support for creative expression, intellectual development, and aesthetic appreciation for students, faculty, staff and audience. Each show in this year’s varied season makes good on the department’s focus on Learn by Doing — comprehensive, hands-on training that gives students a balanced and enriched knowledge of performance, onstage and behind the scenes.
All of our performances are on campus at the Alex and Faye Spanos Theatre. For ticket information, call the Performing Arts Ticket Center at 805-756-2787. And you can always reach us in our main department office at 805-756-1465.
Thank you for your support. See you at the theatre!
Josh Machamer
Chair, Theatre & Dance Department
Lysistrata
by Aristophanes, adapted by Ellen McLaughlin
october 31 - november 2 @ 8:00Pm
november 3 @ 2:00pm
november 7 - 9 @ 8:00pm
Call it the premiere “make-love-not-war” play, Lysistrata by Aristophanes, first performed in 411 bce, is a bold, bawdy, comedic romp that is ripe for our current times. It follows an Athenian wife, Lysistrata, weary of the endless Peloponnesian War, who persuades the other women of Greece to stage a sex strike against their husbands…until peace can be negotiated. A sexually charged power grab of epic proportions.
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50
Orchesis Dance Concert
january 17 - 18 @ 8:00Pm
january 18 @ 2:00pm
january 23 - 25 @ 8:00pm
In 1969, Dr. Moon Ja Minn Suhr established the Orchesis Dance Company at Cal Poly. Their first dance performance was held in 1970 and now, 50 years later, you are invited to join this year’s company as they dance choreography inspired by previous concert titles and program cover artwork. “50” will feature performances in the genres of ballet, modern, jazz, and contemporary by Cal Poly faculty and students as well as guest artists.
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Hailed by many as “…the greatest American play ever written,” Our Town provides a poetic look at life in the small town of Grover’s Corners, New Hampshire. Through three acts of “Daily Life,” “Love and Marriage,” and “Death and Eternity,” this reimagining of Thornton Wilder’s classic story is a remarkably universal yet personal portrait of our collective humanity; an American tale about family, friendship, love, death, and a life worth living.
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The Last Five Years
by Jason Robert Brown
may 7 - 9 @ 8:00pm
May 10 @ 2:00pm
May 14 - 16 @ 8:00pm
Time bends in Jason Robert Brown's award-winning musical, The Last Five Years. We follow two New Yorkers, Cathy and Jamie, as they navigate the course of five years as a couple. Through their personal peaks and valleys, the story unfolds itself in a non-conventional way: simultaneously backwards and forwards, as Cathy’s journey is told from ending to beginning, and Jamie’s from beginning to end. An honest and intimate story about the hope for a love that looks to stand the test of time.
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