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Life & Arts

UH students present musicals at Zilka Hall

By Portia Elaine-Gant
The Daily Cougar

Lady Windermere's Fan, "The Magic Barrel" and One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest are familiar titles, but Stuart Ostrow's Musical Theatre Collaboration class has transformed these classics.

Student directors, composers and lyricists have put these tales to music in an innovative fashion for the 32nd annual Musical Theatre Lab.

These three new musicals-in-progress, which will be performed tonight at Zilka Hall in the Hobby Center for the Performing Arts, 800 Bagby St., are the culmination of a 15-week project guided by noted Broadway producer and UH professor Stuart Ostrow. The Musical Theatre Lab originated in 1973 at St. Clements Church in New York City as an effort by Ostrow to teach young writers.

"The hallmark of Broadway has always been mediocrity, but there was a time when theatre was a shot fired around the world, and it would change your life, and it happened at least once every season, and once was enough," Ostrow said. "The fault is not in our stars. We can make the earth move again if we teach writers that the way to write a great musical is to be great."

Though audiences see only 30 to 40 minutes of the new musicals -- the dramatic highlights of the work -- the process began almost six months before production. Ostrow interviewed the directors, book writers, composers, lyricists and choreographers during the summer and viewed samples of their work.

"I choose the teams that I want and, based upon their level of talent, choose works I think will be suitable," Ostrow said. "Then I lock them in a room and don't let them out until they finish it. That goes on for eight weeks and then they rehearse. It's not a participatory democracy. It's fascist, and I'm the head fascist."

Lady Windermere's Fan is based on Oscar Wilde's first play about the drama-filled, high society world of Victorian London. Recently married Lady Windermere believes her husband has been unfaithful and decides to leave him, and the dramatic irony in the revelation of the mistress is astonishing.

Theater senior Philip Hays is directing Bronx Bashert, based on the short story "The Magic Barrel" by Bernard Malamud. 

John Garret directed One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest. Garret, who worked with book writer M.J. Wilson-Emig and composer and lyricist Henry Darragh, said the biggest challenge was finding the motivation for mentally unbalanced characters to break out in song. 

The shows begin at 8 p.m. Tickets are $5 in advance and $10 at the door and can be purchased through the Hobby Center at (713) 315-2525 or online at www.thehobbycenter.org.

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