TALK BACK
After every Wednesday night performance (excluding Opening Nights), our actors stick around to hear what you have to say and answer your questions. Come have fun with this lively back-and-forth talk!
TALK ABOUT
Every fourth Thursday of a production run, we host a panel discussion after the show with local experts who discuss the show and its pertinent themes. Please join us in this interesting and valuable community conversation.
TALK WITH
On various dates TBA, we feature a special evening with an actor, director or choreographer who speak about themselves and their professions, and maybe even sing and dance a little. Enjoy coffee, tea and cookies and the chance to talk with these wonderfully creative people!
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MusicalFare Theatre's
T3 SERIES presents
TALK ABOUT: “FOLLOW YOUR STAR"
DATE/TIME: Thursday, November 17, 2011
TIME: Following the performance of A CLASS ACT at approximately 9:30pm
As part of MusicalFare Theatre’s T3 Series (see information below) and in connection with MusicalFare’s current production of A CLASS ACT, MusicalFare presents “Follow Your Star.” This Talk About event is an informative and interesting conversation about the challenges artists face in finding success, recognition, and support in their lifetime, as well as the psychological and emotional challenges of the creative process and its pursuit.
The evening’s panelists include:
Dr. Ellen Banks, Professor/Department Chair – Psychology Department, Daemen College
AP Gorny, Artist and Associate Professor - Fine Arts Department, Buffalo State College
Randall Kramer, Artistic/Executive Director, MusicalFare Theatre
The panel discussion is FREE; the evening is relaxed and informal, and people are encouraged to participate in the dialogue.
Tickets to the performance of A CLASS ACT that evening can be purchased by calling the Theatre box office at 716-839-8540 or by ordering online at www.musicalfare.com .
MusicalFare Theatre’s Talk About series is funded in part by the New York Council for the Humanities.
Educational Panelist Bios:
Dr. Ellen Banks - is Professor of Psychology at Daemen College in Buffalo, New York. Her Ed.D. in Human Development is from Harvard Graduate School of Education. She has studied and taught Human Development topics throughout of the life span, including infancy, early childhood, adolescence and cognitive development in early adulthood.
Before focusing on early adult development, she studied cultural conceptions of child temperament in Malaysia and the effects of lead exposure on early childhood development. As a faculty member in a predominantly teaching institution, she has been active in the assessment and development of reflective judgment in college students, and in designing an undergraduate psychology curriculum that emphasizes hands-on research experience.
AP Gorny - SUNY College Buffalo BFA '72; Yale University School of Art MFA '74; currently an Artist and Associate Professor - Fine Arts Department, Buffalo State College.
Artwork in nearly 100 public collections include: Brooklyn Museum; Victoria and Albert Museum, London; S.R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Philadelphia Museum of Art; Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts; Franklin Institute; National Gallery, Washington, D.C. And hundreds of private collections.
Major fellowship recipient: The National Endowment for the Arts; Pennsylvania Council for the Arts; Pew Fellowships in the Arts; and Philadelphia Fairmount Park Commission.
He had been an active figure in the Philadelphia art community over 25 years. Tenured Associate Professor Tyler School of Art of Temple University. Permanent Faculty Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. Also taught at Bryn Mawr College; Pratt Institute of Art; Graduate Program University of the Arts, Philadelphia; Graduate School of Art University of Arizona, Tucson; The San Francisco Art Institute. Now Associate Professor tenured SUNY College Buffalo School of Arts & Humanities' Department of Fine Arts.
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In a freewheeling conversation that ranged from the elements of satire versus caricature to child labor laws in early 19th century England, from the stock market crash of the 1930s to the power of human touch, MusicalFare Theatre’s “Please, Sir, I Want Some More” panel discussion on September 29th after the performance of OLIVER! was a lively, interesting and even moving exchange between the panel of experts gathered for the event and the 50+ audience members and visitors from the general public who came to the Theatre specifically for this discussion.
The panel presentation was part of MusicalFare’s T3 Series: Talk Back, Talk About and Talk With. The T3 Series was developed to expand the import of the Theatre’s five musicals per season by offering different opportunities for public conversation with various artistic talent involved in the productions and with experts from the community.
“Please, Sir, I Want Some More” was a TALK ABOUT societal conditions in 19th century London, as portrayed by Charles Dickens in Oliver Twist, updated to both the 1930s Depression – which was the setting for this production of OLIVER!--and contemporary America, including the challenges faced when translating gritty social realism into “popular entertainment.” The evening’s panelists included: Chris Kelly, Director of OLIVER!, Dr. Peter Siedlecki, Daemen College, Dr. Ann C. Colley, Distinguished Professor, Buffalo State College and Randall Kramer, Artistic/Executive Director, MusicalFare Theatre.
Dr. Siedlecki painted a sobering portrait of Dickens’ England, recounting the story of a six-year old girl who had forgotten what the sun looked like because she worked in the mines all day. He recited reform legislation from 1832 which was designed to reduce the number of hours children age 6 to 13 could work to 48, and the number of hours that children age 13 to 18 could work down to 69 per week.
Director Chris Kelly spoke of the parallels he saw in the social conditions of Victorian England and the Great Depression of the 1930s and, therefore, his decision to set this production of OLIVER! in Dustbowl America. When asked by an audience member about the difficulty of portraying this kind of harsh reality in a musical, he attested to the daily challenge he felt in marrying pathos and humor in all aspects of the production, but especially in the music. It was exactly this challenge which inspired him to tailor the music to the heart of Dickens’ story through the use of folk or bluegrass instruments -- guitar, mandolin, fiddle-- and to subtly reframe some of the show’s tunes. Thus, for example, "Food, Glorious Food" was performed in a way that made it much more heartfelt and real than the chirpy Disney-esque show stopping number it often is.
There was spirited conversation by panelists, the audience and the actors about the vividness of Dickens’ characters in Oliver Twist and the larger-than-life portrayal many of them received in this production of the musical. Dr. Colley read from Dickens’ own words about his desire to paint his characters “in all their deformity, in all their wretchedness, in all the squalid poverty of their lives; to show them as they really are, forever sulking uneasily through the dirtiest paths of life, with the great, black, ghastly gallows clinging upon their prospect, turning them where they may.” Through such colorful characterizations, right down to individual names, like Mr. and Mrs. Sowerberry, Dickens was able to effectively satirize the political and social conditions of his day, and the actors in OLIVER! were able to create comedy through their exaggerated roles, both tickling audience funny bones while pricking their conscience.