Off Broadway On Campus

Interested in seeing some professional to semi-professional musical theater?  Here is some information on musicals coming to Rochester in the next few weeks.

Pride and Prejudice
This movie-based musical is coming to Eastman Theater on Tuesday, October 21st @ 7:30pm on its way to Broadway!  According to the website, tickets range from $35-75 and can be purchased through Ticketmaster, but they should have discounted student tickets at the door.  For more information, call the box office at 585-274-1100.

Edges
This awesome new musical by Pasek & Paul is playing in Toronto on Sunday and Monday evenings through November 10th. Tickets are ~$18 for students.  Check it out here.

Rooms
Geva Theater in downtown Rochester is performing this “rock romance” musical through October 26th. You can find the website here.

The Turn of the Screw
Not to be confused with Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew, this opera “…was claimed to be one of the most dramatically appealing English operas,” according to Wikipedia.  Coming to Kilbourn Hall at Eastman on November 6th – 9th. More information can be found on the concert calendar and the RPO website.

MTC at SUNY Geneseo
The Musical Theater Club at SUNY Geneseo puts on a musical revue each semester, similar to our own.  Being an audition-exclusive group, I would say they’re a more dance intensive version of OBOC (youtube).  After some hunting, I believe their show runs from November 13th – 15th. More info to come!

Quotable OBOC makes its triumphant return to the OBOC website! On the bottom of left column, there is a widget that displays a random quotable! There are over 500 600 quotables in the database, including all of the quotables from the old website, plus all of the quotes pulled from emails, starting with the Katie Walsh era, continuing through Lydia’s and my eras, and most* of the quotes from the current Joe Bedont tenure. New quotables are added every time the new minutes are sent out.

So take a look! Relive all of OBOC’s most eloquent and embarrassing moments, with such classics as…

• Katie W.: I said something really dumb to Rob Rice tonight but now that I’m in charge of Quotable OBOC I don’t have to tell you what it was! Ha!
• Jeff (’03): “My rule is, I don’t vote for girls.”
  Sue (’01): “Thank god I’m a woman!”
• Jess A. (’03) : My ex-boyfriend is out there.
  D.J. (’04, T5 ‘05): Mike’s boyfriend is out there?
• M-W: “Javert is the sexiest character.”
  Ben T: “Now I know why you cast me.”
• Kristen: “The alto section is incredibly sexually repressed.”
• Shonali: It would be REALLY beneficial for us to expose ourselves to the freshmen ASAP. Yes, that’s right. I want to expose myself to the freshmen.
• Tim: I’m a dancer at heart.
• Julie Lamb: Just because I like being a lesbian doesn’t mean I shouldn’t get to have fun.
• (after one of the less memorable cross-dressing jokes)
  Howie: “Where’s your notepad, Joe?”
  Joe: “Sorry, it’s in my pants.”
• Lydia: “I didn’t write down any quotables! Quick, someone say something funny!”
  Dan: “That was pretty funny.”
• Dan: You make me want to take off and fly…oh noes, I made quotable again.
  David Lu!!: That’s your third tonight.
  Dan: Goddammit.

* I lost a bunch of the OBOC emails from September-October 2007, so if they happen to be in your personal archives, please forward them to me!

Edit: Howie has supplied me with the needed quotes, putting the database at over 600 quotes now. We are a rather quotable bunch, aren’t we? Thanks Howie.

Fans of Benj Pasek & Justin Paul, the young songwriting team that brought us “Be My Friend” (The Facebook Song), should check out their newly revamped website. There is video, some audio clips, and a lot more sheet music for sale, some of it from the new version of Edges that opened in Albany last year.

Also, if word hasn’t gotten around to all OBOCians yet, David Lu found masterful transcriptions of the music from Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog.

OBOC is the University of Rochester’s only musical theater performing group. Each semester, we present a musical revue with numbers from a great variety of Broadway and Off-Broadway shows. The revues are produced, directed, choreographed, accompanied, musically arranged, costumed, and performed by students.

Auditions play a role in casting smaller numbers, but the group is open to anyone who enjoys musical theater. Celebrating our tenth anniversary this fall, our ranks have swelled to over seventy singers, dancers, and musicians!

Check out the side panels to learn more about the group. In the articles below, we keep each other up to date about musical theater happenings on campus, in the local area, and on the Internet.