PRESS RELEASE
UNIVERSITY OF CENTRAL ARKANSAS
COLLEGE OF FINE ARTS AND COMMUNICATION
March 14, 2013
Contact: Dr. Rob Holden, (501) 450-5762, roberth@uca.edu; Dr. Wolf Oeste, (501) 450-5760; wolfgang@uca.edu.
UCA OPERA THEATRE TO PRESENT THE PIRATES OF PENZANCE
By Dannielle Douglas
College of Fine Arts and Communication Media Office
CONWAY — University of Central Arkansas students will perform the world-renowned Gilbert and Sullivan comic operetta The Pirates of Penzance April 5-7 at the Donald W. Reynolds Performance Hall.
Times are 7:30 p.m. on Friday, April 5 and Saturday, April 6and 3 p.m. on Sunday, April 7.
Pirates is open to the public with free admission. The production is perfect for all ages open to a wonderfully witty satire full of singing and dancing.
“This is a fun, frothy, light-hearted musical,” said Dr. Rob Holden, co-director of UCA’s Opera Theatre Workshop. “It’s a great show for people to cut their teeth on opera.”
The show will be performed completely by UCA music students; for some this will be their first time on such a large live stage.
Pirates is a musical of love, determination and values, with, according to scottishopera.org.uk, “A young man bound by an overactive sense of duty, a soft-hearted pirate king with a hopeless band of rogues at his side, a beautiful young girl, a very modern major-general and an ineffectual bevy of policemen.” The time is placed in Victorian society with very particular moral values.
Holden and Dr. Wolfgang Oeste, co-director of the Opera Theatre Workshop, will direct and conduct the grand performance. This hilarious voyage was first shown to the public at the Fifth Avenue Theatre in New York on Dec. 31, 1879.
Shauna Meador, associate professor of theatre, was the costume consultant.
“This is a wonderful entry level performance for student singers,” Holden said. “It brings a different level of energy and purpose when performing in a hall as big as Reynolds. My main goal, though, is to help them see what they can learn from a performance such as this. What they learn and how they can apply this to their futures are what is most important to me.”
For more information, contact Holden at (501) 450-5762 or Oeste at (501) 450-5760.
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