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6th Susan Porter Memorial Symposium
October 2-4, 2010
[Tentative Schedule -|- Registration Form]
Classic Broadway and Those Who Built It:
Theatrical Work of American Jews, African Americans,
and First Generation Immigrants in the 20th Century
On October 2, 3, and 4, 2010, the American Music Research Center at the College of Music, University of Colorado at Boulder will host the sixth Susan Porter Memorial Symposium, a three-day conference to be held in downtown Boulder and at the Imig Music Building on campus.
The symposium will overlap with the annual Robert and Ruth Fink Lecture in American Music on Sunday, October 3. The featured lecturer will be Dr. Rose Rosengard Subotnik, Professor Emerita of Music at Brown University. The rest of the conference will consist of eight other paper and discussion sessions exploring many topics in 20th-century American Musical Theater. Speakers will introduce a wide array of subjects--including (but not limited to) ethnicity, gender, genre, class and race—as they appear in canonical works, specific productions, and the lives of individual performers in New York during the period from 1920 to 1970.
The decisive cultural work of American Jews and first-generation immigrants of all backgrounds in the creation of the Broadway musical will be a particular focus. The keynote speaker, on Saturday, October 2, will be Dr. Andrea Most, Professor of English at the University of Toronto, whose book Making Americans: Jews and the Broadway Musical (Harvard University Press, 2004) is a fundamental text.
Because 2010 will mark the centenary of Broadway composer Frank Loesser’s birth (1910-1969), special emphasis will be placed on the decade between his two classic shows, Guys and Dolls (1950) and How to Succeed in Business without Really Trying (1961). A dinner concert especially conceived for this conference and designed as a benefit for the American Music Research Center and the Boulder Community Hospital Cancer Center will consist of a medley of Loesser songs performed by the resident professional cast of Boulder’s Dinner Theater. This will take place on Monday evening, October 4. Jo Sullivan Loesser, Frank’s widow and a celebrated Broadway singer herself, will be on hand to participate in the celebration.
L. Bailey, Porter Symposium, AMRC
University of Colorado at Boulder
280 UCB, Macky 201
Boulder, CO 80309-0280
email: lisa.bailey@colorado.edu
