OLLI at Duke • Summer 2020
Course Description
On March 31, 1943, the curtain went up on Oklahoma!, the first collaboration between two Broadway veterans, and American musical theater was never again the same. Over the next twenty years, they produced five acknowledged masterpieces, some near-misses, and a few notable flops. This course will explore their collaboration—from “Oh, What a Beautiful Mornin’” to “Climb Every Mountain”—to understand what distinguished their work from previous musical comedies and how their legacy continues to influence us today. Each Zoom session will be primarily lecture with video and audio clips, but there will be an opportunity to ask questions through Zoom’s chat feature. THIS website will provide handouts of the presentation slides as well as links to online videos.
Instructor : Alan Teasley
Alan Teasley began his career in education as a high school English and drama teacher. In the 1970s he served as director, musical director, and actor in several productions of the Durham Theatre Guild. In 2006, he retired after working for 31 years in various roles in the Durham Public Schools. He continued to work as a professor in Duke’s Master of Arts in Teaching Program, retiring from that work in 2015. He now serves as an at-large member on the OLLI Advisory Board. Most relevant to his qualifications to teach this particular course, however, is that when a teenager, the first LP he ever bought with his own money was an album of Rodgers and Hammerstein overtures.