‘Working’ transports audience back to the 1960s
On April 28th, The Department of Performing Arts will bring the stories of America’s unsung heroes to the stage with the Tony nominated musical, Working. Working, originally staged in 1974 is based on a book written by Studs Terkel, which he wrote after Terkel conducted interviews with hundreds of working men and women across the United States about their jobs and why they did them. The show has undergone many revisions, most recently in 2011 with the addition of two songs by 2016 Pulitzer Prize winner Lin-Manuel Miranda writer of both Hamilton and In the Heights. Elon will be performing the most recent revision including Miranda’s additions. The show also features music by James Taylor, Craig Carnelia and many other songwriters and composers. The 20 actors all had to audition for the show before gaining access into the course where they did most of their rehearsing up until Grand Night on April 3rd, when they begun evening rehearsals as well as weekends. “With this show, because of the nature of the beast—if you will—we began individual monologue work, sometimes we start staging big company numbers, and we did do some of that, we staged the opening and middle section, but we started working a lot on the acting, because there are a as many monologues in the show as there are songs,” said director Lynne Kurdzeil-Formato.
