Summer 2009

During The History & Performance of Musical Theatre students learned about the beginnings of musical theatre in America: vaudeville, the birth of Broadway, pioneers such as Irving Berlin, Cole Porter, the Gershwin Brothers, and of course Rogers & Hammerstein. This gave the students involved in A Musical Stimulus Package, a greater sense of how musicals reflect the time period in which they are written and performed, something that helped them in preparing their own production which poked fun of the state of the American economy.

A Musical Stimulus Package, Shorewood Drama Jr.’s first production, was a musical revue about the state of the American Economy. The show was part “Let’s Put on a Show” (reminiscent of Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland musicals,) part Vaudeville Follies (that would make Florenz Ziegfeld and George M. Cohen proud,) with a dash of current event lampooning (like Saturday Night Live...only with a “G” rating.) The show featured Broadway classic like Cabaret’s “Money” and Annie’s “Easy Street;” newer hits such as Dirty Rotten Scoundrel’s “Great Big Stuff,” and Avenue Q’s “For Now;” and cinematic standards like White Christmas’s “Count Your Blessings” and 42nd Street’s “We’re in the Money.”