Two versatile and talented theater icons will be in the spotlight for this concert — local, award-winning playwright-director-choreographer-teacher Jim Christian, who will host an evening of music by Tony Award-winning composer and lyricist Stephen Sondheim.
Christian, a Layton resident, received national acclaim when his original adaptation of “The Pirated Penzance” (now titled just “Pirated!”), was selected as a national winner in the Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival in 1994. This work, which cleverly places Gilbert & Sullivan’s classic “Pirates of Penzance” operetta in a bustling Hollywood movie studio just when “talkies” are the hot new thing, has been produced across the Wasatch Front and across the country.
Christian’s prolific work as a director and choreographer has been seen throughout the area at Pioneer Theatre Company, the Utah Opera Company, Hale Centre Theatre, Park City’s Egyptian Theatre, WSU’s Utah Musical Theatre (which Christian directed for 10 years), Rodgers Memorial Theatre, the Grand Theatre and the Utah Shakespearean Festival, where he is directing and choreographing “The Secret Garden” for this summer’s season.
Long a Sondheim aficionado, Christian has produced many of the composer’s works on the WSU campus and recently provided the staging for the Utah Symphony’s “Tribute to Sondheim” featuring Faith Prince, Gregg Edelman and Alice Ripley.
This evening’s program will include music from Sondheim’s “Into the Woods,” “Sunday in the Park With George,” “Sweeney Todd” and other Sondheim works.
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Event Dates
Sunday, July 26, 2009 | 7:00 PM