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"Secret Garden" musical features 50 students
from the area in June performances
in ATLAS Black Box Studio
Photos: click here.
Slideshow: click here
In the news:
Broadway in Boulder presents "The Secret Garden" --
Production features wide, varied cast, innovative technology at Black Box Theatre
Mark Collins, Daily Camera, June 7, 2009
Broadway comes to Boulder: Big stars hosting free labs
Brittany Anas, Boulder Camera, March 9, 2009
CU's ATLAS Center Offers Students, Public,
Opportunity to Work with Entertainment Industry Professionals
CU Press Release, March 4, 2009
Broadway in Boulder, CU's ATLAS Center to host workshops
Mark Collins, Boulder Camera, Feb. 27, 2009
Fifty students from 19 area high schools, middle schools and colleges will present "The Secret Garden," a Tony Award winning musical based on the novel, in a series of performances from June 12-28 in the ATLAS Black Box Studio at the University of Colorado at Boulder. All performances of the show have been sold out.
The show has been in production in the Black Box since January. It is the first full-scale musical produced by Broadway in Boulder, which is the musical theater and dramatic studio of the Parlando School for the Arts in Boulder.
"The Secret Garden is the largest pre-professional youth production in Colorado," said David Ayers, a veteran of Broadway productions such as "Wicked" and "Mama Mia!" who is co-directing the musical.
"The music is so challenging in this show," said Angela Gaylor. "These kids really rose to the challenge." Gaylor, a Broadway star of "La Cage Aux Folles," "Hairspray" and "Oklahoma!" is co-directing the production with Ayers. She and Ayers founded Broadway in Boulder before merging with Parlando in 2007.
The musical takes place in early 1900s England, where young Mary Lennox is sent to live with a widower and his crippled son after the death of her parents. While living there, she discovers a secret, walled garden and the magic that changes their lives.
The Denver Center for the Performing Arts is providing the Victorian set pieces, and the production uses original Broadway costumes. The high-tech ATLAS Black Box Studio will offer backdrop scenery through digital projections. The whole production is a collaboration with ATLAS Center for Arts, Media and Performance staff.
Yin-Feng Keynes Chen of Boulder Strings Academy will conduct the orchestra, which includes students and professionals from the Boulder area.
Ayers and Gaylor began organizing the show last year by placing audition posters in area schools and colleges. After about 500 auditions and callbacks with three cuts, 30 students were chosen to perform in the musical and 20 were selected to work on production aspects of the show.
The students also benefited from a series of four labs/workshops organized by Ayers and Gaylor, who brought in industry professionals from Disney Theatricals and Cirque du Soleil, as well as a Tony Award winning conductor and a Tony Award winning director. The labs were held in ATLAS and were open to the public.
The production suffered a setback when Parlando and Broadway in Boulder student Aida Neitenbach, a 13-year old from Louisville who had been cast as Mary Lennox in Secret Garden, landed a role in the national tour of Disney's "Mary Poppins."
Gaylor said auditions were reopened for the Secret Garden and attracted 40 girls. Elise Legendre, a fifth grader at the private elementary Bixby School in Boulder, was selected for the role of Mary Lennox.
"She just is that role," Gaylor said.
Performances will be Tuesdays-Sundays from June 12-27 at ATLAS, located just north of the Euclid parking garage on the CU campus. Evening performances will be at 7:30 p.m.; Saturdays and Sundays additionally will have 2 p.m. matinee performances. Tickets are available at Parlando's home in the Dairy Center for the Arts, 2590 Walnut St., Boulder, and online at http://thedairy.org/?page_id=1017. Prices are $20 for reserved seats and $15 for senior or students. Reserved tickets for opening night are $32 and include a post-performance reception. Each performance is limited to 90 tickets. Full directions to ATLAS are at:
http://www.colorado.edu/atlas/building/directions/.
ATLAS is a University of Colorado at Boulder institute for undergraduate, graduate and outreach programs that supports technology education for people and programs that traditionally do not have access to equipment and resources.
Parlando is Boulder's premier music school with 50 teachers offering lessons and classes to over 650 students of all instruments, ages and abilities including musical theater and drama. Broadway in Boulder is headquartered alongside the other Parlando studios at the Dairy Center for the Arts.
Additional groups involved with the project include the Boulder Arts Commission, Boulder Youth Symphony, Pine View LLC, The Ritter Family Foundation, Multimedia Audio Visual, Noodles and Company, The St. Julien Hotel and Spa, FedEx Office, The New Foundry, Mike's Camera, the Red Empress Foundation, Wallaroo Hat Company, Russi USA and Apple Inc.
Students in the show are from: Boulder, Fairview, Broomfield, Niwot and Nederland high schools; Monarch High School, Louisville; Centaurus High School, Lafayette; Silver Creek High School, Longmont; Peak to Peak, a K-12 charter school in Lafayette; Summit Middle School, a charter school in Boulder; Manhattan, Southern Hills and Centennial middle schools, all in Boulder; Shining Mountain Waldorf School, Boulder; Bixby School, Boulder; Boulder Country Day, a private pre-school-8th grade school; the University of Colorado, Boulder; University of Northern Colorado, Greeley; and Metro State College, Denver.
More information is at:
http://www.broadwayinboulder.com/Site/The_Secret_Garden.html.
The Black Box Studio
The 2,700-square-foot Black Box Studio, operated by the ATLAS Center for Arts, Media and Performance, provides a flexible performance environment for interdisciplinary artists to merge creativity with technology.
Features include a projection array, DMX controlled intelligent lighting, tension grid, surround sound, multi-track recording, midi-interface grand piano, Internet access, broadcast capability, sequencing software, videoconference support, and sprung dance floor. Support spaces include a green room, dressing rooms with showers/bathrooms and storage.
The ATLAS Center for Arts, Media & Performance mentors people with distinct viewpoints, interests and relationships as they explore dynamic combinations
of arts, technology, education and society.
Key Secret Garden Personnel
The show will be directed by Broadway stars David Ayers (Wicked, Mamma Mia!, Fiddler on the Roof) and
Angela Gaylor (La Cage Aux Folles, Hairspray and Oklahoma!). Ayers and Gaylor are the founders
of Broadway in Boulder Studios, a conservatory-based musical theater program consisting of classes
and voice lessons at Parlando.
The orchestra will be under the direction of Keynes Chen (Boulder Philharmonic
Orchestra, Denver Youth Symphony and Colorado Youth Symphony). Chen is also the founder
of the Flatirons Strings Academy.
David Ayers graduated from Northwestern University in Chicago with a
bachelor's degree in Vocal Performance and Theater. David has starred on
Broadway as Sky in Mamma Mia!, originated the role of Fyedka in the 2005
Tony-nominated revival of Fiddler on the Roof, and most recently took over
the role of Fiyero in the hit Broadway musical Wicked at the Gershwin Theater.
Some of his other credits include Claude in Hair at the Actor's Theatre of
Louisville, the American premiere of Honk! at Northshore Music Theatre,
Rodger in A New Brain at Portland's Center Stage, and The Sound of Music
at the St. Louis MUNY. While in New York, he originated lead roles in the
workshops of Little Women, Elton John's Lestat, Maury Yeston's Death Takes
a Holiday, Barry Manilow's Harmony, and starred opposite his fiancee, Angela
Gaylor, in Tom Jones. He can be heard on the revival cast recording of
Fiddler on the Roof.
Ayers has worked with some of Broadway's greatest
composers such as Adam Guettel, Stephen Schwartz, William Finn and
George Stiles. He has studied with Ann Bogart's SITI Company at the Humana
Festival of New American Plays and continued his studies at the Edinburgh
Theater Festival in Scotland as well as the Festival d'Avignon in
France.
His television credits include guest starring on "Law and Order:
Criminal Intent" and "The Guiding Light." He has appeared in Elle Girl
magazine and is featured in Wicked's coffee table book: The Grimmerie. This
past summer he was a guest Master Teacher at the Broadway Theater Dance
Workshop.
Angela Gaylor is a graduate with a Bachelor's in Fine Arts Degree in musical
theater from the prestigious Cincinnati Conservatory of Music where she won the
Laurie Beechman Award for outstanding performance. She is an alumni of Interlochen
Arts Camp and a previous scholarship winner to the Sanford Meisner
Neighborhood Playhouse in NYC. Gaylor has been on Broadway where she originated
the role of Anne in the Tony-Award Winning revival La Cage Aux Folles,
Amber in Hairspray and danced the dream ballet in Trevor Nunn/Susan Stroman's
Oklahoma! She has also appeared as the title role in Cinderella at Papermill Playhouse
as well as in Dream a Little Dream: The Story of the Mamas and the Papas,
and Best Foot Forward off-Broadway. By age 19, she was working with Stephen
Sondheim and Paul Gemignani as Anne in A Little Night Music (Mann Center, the
Kennedy Center's Sondheim Celebration, Northshore Music Theater). Other roles
include Julie Jordan in Carousel at Northshore Music Theater, April in Company
at Pittsburgh Civic Light Opera, Sophia Western in Tom Jones at Northshore Music
Theater, as well as originating roles in Maury Yeston's Death Takes A Holiday,
Barry Manilow's Harmony, Frank Wildhorn's Camille Claudel, and the title role
in Annie Lenox's Barbarella. She can be heard on the cast recording of the world
premiere of George Stiles' Tom Jones and on Hal Leonard's "Tunes For Teens" CD.
Her career also extends to television where she guest starred in "Law and Order:
SVU" and on "All My Children" as Libby. She has been a soloist with the Philadelphia
Orchestra as well as the Cincinnati Pops. Gaylor is currently engaged to
fellow performer and teacher David Ayers, has taught at the Broadway Dance
Theater Workshop alongside Ann Reinking and is on the adjunct faculty for
Wright State University.
Yin-Feng Keynes Chen has devoted most of his life to the violin. The son of a
famous violinist and pedagogue in China, Chen began the violin when he was
only 4 years of age. He entered the Chungking School of the Arts at the age of
11, then the Shanghai Music Conservatory when he was 13. In 1995 he
moved his violin study to CU-Boulder and received his Master's Degree of Music
Performance from the University of Colorado at Boulder.
Chen has been teaching
violin since 1994 and has received his complete Suzuki pedagogy training under
the famed Suzuki Pedagogue Dr. William Starr. Chen was the principle violin
teacher for Englewood Arts' Strings Attached program at five different Englewood
public schools for two years. He also coaches and mentors the Boulder Youth
Symphony's string quartet program, and served as a BYS board member from
2005-2006 and then the president of Boulder Youth Symphony from 2006-2007.
He often gives sectional rehearsals and master classes for Front Range youth orchestras,
and he serves as the executive director of A Mid-Summer Day's Dream
String Camp. From 2006-2007, he was the conductor for Colorado Youth Symphony's
Sinfonia Orchestra and starting the 2007-2008 season, Chen is
the conductor for CYS' Philharmonia Orchestra. Because of his passion for music
education, Chen and his wife, Regan Kane, are also beginning a high-standard
music school in the Boulder area called Flatirons Strings Academy.
Updated June 22, 2009