IWU Workshops a Brand-New Musical Saturday at 8

This Saturday, April 27, the Music Theatre Workshop Class at Illinois Wesleyan University will perform the Midwest premiere workshop presentation of All the Kids Are Doing It, a topical new musical with book and lyrics by Kate Thomas and music by Joey Contreras. Not only does this workshop give you the chance to see a brand-new, still-in-development musical, but it's free!

Thomas and Contreras will also offer a discussion of the show on Sunday, April 28, at 11 am in the E. Melba Johnson Kirkpatrick Laboratory Theatre at Illinois Wesleyan.

All the Kids Are Doing It was previously workshopped at the Provincetown Playhouse in New York City in March of this year in conjunction with the NYU Steinhardt songwriting program. Broadway World describes the piece as "a contemporary pop-rock musical that explores the reality of young adults today who exploit themselves and others in order to achieve personal gain."

Thomas and Contreras have written a piece that explores college, the internet, artistic freedom, celebrity, privacy and a struggle to find a voice in an increasingly complicated world. In other words, All the Kids Are Doing It is of the moment and perfect for today's college kids.

Kate Thomas

Kate Thomas is a New York City based writer and actress. She received her BA in Theatre from Sarah Lawrence College, and her MFA in Musical Theatre Writing from Tisch School of the Arts at NYU. Her musical theatre work includes, ALL THE KIDS ARE DOING IT (book & lyrics), The Champagne Fountain (book & lyrics), and Flung (book & lyrics). She has also appeared in numerous NYC productions, some of which include, Five Women Wearing the Same Dress, Spring's Awakening, and Spike Heels. Kate is the recipient of the Paulette Goddard Scholarship and is now a proud member of the Dramatist's Guild.

Joey Contreras at the piano

Joey Contreras is a musical theatre songwriter in the New York scene. His original compositions and arrangements have been featured in NYC venues including Joe's Pub, Lincoln Center, Le Poisson Rouge, Laurie Beechman Theater, The Duplex and multiple Broadway in South Africa galas at the Manhattan Center. Internationally, performances of his music have stretched as far as Australia, Germany, South Korea and the UK. He remains at work on his song cycle, This Thing Called Love, originally produced by Philly Music Theatre Works, and has two other musicals currently in development. Recipient of the 2010 ASCAP Foundation Max Dreyfus Scholarship Award, Joey holds a BFA in musical theatre from University of the Arts in Philadelphia, PA and is in NYU’s Graduate Musical Theatre Writing Program. His first album, Love Me, Love Me Not: The Music of Joey Contreras features performances by exciting Broadway talent and is available on iTunes and CDbaby.com.

ALL THE KIDS ARE DOING IT

A Musical

Book and Lyrics by Kate Thomas

Music by Joey Contreras

Cast: Annie Simpson, Amy Stockhaus, Patsita Jiratipayabood, Will Henke, Zach Mahler, Ben Mulgrew, T. Isaac Sherman, Joey Chu, Marek Zurowski, Adam Walleser, Josh Levinson, Emilie Hanlet, Kate Rozycki,Lizzie Raniville, Jenna Haimes, Kayla White and Brittany Ambler.

Musical Direction by Saundra DeAthos-Meers

Choreography by Jean MacFarland Kerr

Directed by Scott Susong

Saturday, April 27, 2013

8 pm

E. Melba Johnson Kirkpatrick Laboratory Theatre 

IWU Fills in the Spaces in 2012-13 Theatre Season

Illinois Wesleyan University's School of Theatre Arts announced most of its schedule for 2012-13 earlier this year, with all kinds of goodies in the works.

At that time, we knew about "A Shayna Maidel," Barbara Lebow's look at a Jewish family, which includes two sisters, one who escaped to America long ago and the other a Holocaust survivor; "9 to 5: The Musical," a fizzy stage version of the Dolly Parton movie hit about working women dealing with a sexist boss; Shakespeare's "As You Like It," which features one of his strongest and best heroines; and the annual faculty choreographed dance concert, all at McPherson Theatre.

For the E. Melba Kirkpatrick Lab Theatre, Shelagh Stevenson's "The Memory of Water," another sister play, this one about Irish siblings struggling with different views of their shared childhood, and "The Breach," by Catherine Filloux, Tarell McCraney and Joe Sutton, about New Orleans and its Hurricane Katrina woes, had already been released as part of the season.

Newly announced is "Red Devils," Debbie Horsfield's 1983 play about four female fans of Manchester United, the legendary British football team. These working-class women eat, sleep and breathe Manchester United, so when they score tickets to the Cup Final, all bets are off.

With Horsfield on the roster, IWU is offering a female-centric year, both in terms of playwrights and the themes explored in the plays. And that extends past the McPherson/Kirkpatrick season.

IWU Assistant Professor Scott Susong notes that he "will cover all three waves of feminism this season since I will be directing 9 to 5, the Music Theatre Society musical in concert 1944's Arlen/Harburg Bloomer Girl (a Celeste Holm vehicle) and the world premiere of All the Kids Are Doing It, book and lyrics by Kate Thomas and music by Joey Contreras (both fresh out of the NYU Graduate Musical Theatre Writing Program) for our Music Theatre Workshop."

You may recall a discussion of "Bloomer Girl" with regard to Celeste Holm's career here.  The musical involves one Evelina Applegate, a girl who doesn't want to wear the hoop skirts put together in her dad's factory, instead insisting she will only wear the radical bloomers invented to make women more mobile as they took on bicycling, tennis and other active pursuits not suited to a big old dress.

"All the Kids" involves gender and sex in the new cyber world, with a look at the kind of sexual and collegiate politics that keeps hitting the headlines at Jezebel and Gawker. You may recall one of those stories, one that involved a gender switch, when a Duke University student who happened to be female posted detailed accounts of her sexual encounters in an email to friends, who forwarded the saucy "thesis" to everybody they knew. Scandals involving male athletes hiring strippers or rating their sexual partners are nothing new, but this one, with a female behind the bawdy emails, was something different, creating a firestorm of controversy. Did the student's actions constitute harassment, invasion of privacy, bad taste, or just good fun, the same kind of hijinks men have been engaging in for centuries?

Joey Contreras, one of the creative minds behind "All the Kids Are Doing It," notes that this new show is a completely original piece inspired by, but not in any way connected to, the events at Duke or any other specific school. He writes that the musical focuses on, "an ambitious girl from a small town, determined to be a writer, but who suddenly finds herself nominated as 'The Ring Around Girl' -- the one who will be passed around sexually amongst the top campus fraternity brothers at Webb University. Desperate for material for her Senior Memoir class, she decides to turn the tables on the fraternity by using and exploiting their sex-fueled tradition as the focus of her piece, which ultimately finds its way online in the most damaging of ways. It absolutely touches on gender and sex issues in a cyber world, but beyond that, it also explores how young adults are constantly on a quest to fit in and stand out without realizing the possible consequences of their actions."

All in all, it sounds like Contreras and Thomas have created a very provocative piece that anybody who followed all those Jezebel and Gawker pieces is going to want to see.

To see the IWU School of Theatre 2012-13 season, including ticket information, click here.