OLLI at Duke • Spring 2023
Course Description
Technically, “off-Broadway” refers to any professional theatre in New York City with a seating capacity between 100 and 499; hence, an off-Broadway musical is one that has played in such venue under the appropriate union contracts. Aesthetically, however, such musicals have been ones that were more intimate, daring, experimental, or financially risky than their more commercial on-Broadway counterparts. Of course, many beloved and wildly successful musicals started “off” and then moved “on” to the Great White Way, such as A Chorus Line, Rent, and Hamilton. In this course we’ll explore some of the influential musicals that didn’t move, that retained their essential off-Broadway character and ran for years. We will begin with the 1954 revival of Brecht and Weill’s The Threepenny Opera and continue with The Fantasticks (1960), Jacques Brel Is Alive and Well and Living in Paris (1968), Godspell (1971), Little Shop of Horrors (1982), and Forbidden Broadway (1983). Students will learn about the books and scores of these seminal shows and how they expanded the boundaries of American musical theatre. The course is primarily lecture with video and audio clips, but students will be able to ask questions and make comments during each class.
Instructor
Alan Teasley began his career as a high school English and drama teacher. After retiring from the Durham Public Schools in 2006, he taught in Duke’s Master of Arts in Teaching Program. A member of the OLLI Advisory Board, he is an avid theatergoer with a particular fondness for American musicals. This is his eleventh course on musical theater for OLLI. Previous courses have focused on the works of Stephen Sondheim, Rodgers & Hammerstein, Kander & Ebb, Frank Loesser, Lerner & Loewe, Jerry Herman, Bock & Harnick, Leonard Bernstein, the ten musicals that have won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, and The Women of Broadway, a survey of musicals with book, lyrics, and/or music by women. In Fall & Winter Terms 2022-23, he presented a two-course survey of Broadway’s Silver Age, focused on the musicals of Rodgers & Hart, George & Ira Gershwin, Irving Berlin, and Cole Porter.