An immersive learning musical created in Spring 2010 with Ball State students is traveling to New York City in the fall, as one of eight new musicals selected to participate in the Festival of New Musicals.
"I had always wanted to write a musical and it was a matter of waiting to find the right students that I thought could create this and they came around," Beth Turcotte, an associate professor of theatre and director of the immersive project, said.
The musical, "The Circus in Winter," will be performed by professionals in front of producers, agents and directors as part of the National Alliance for Musical Theatre's festival. Students performed it originally in 2011 and will be doing another performance in September.
Rather than a full-blown show, the musical is cut down to 45 minutes.
"It's just sitting on stools performing the script and music rather than a full production," she said.
The musical is an adaptation of a novel with the same name written by Ball State's Cathy Day, an associate professor of English. The musical focuses on the time period from about 1895 to the early 1900s in a fictional town of Lima, Ind., where the circus came to winterize. This home state connection is important for Day.
"The best part is it's a book about Indiana so it's really important to me that my book became a way for other kids from Indiana to sort of become artists, to design sets and write songs and learn how to act by playing a character that came out of my imagination," she said. "That's pretty meaningful."
With every new version of the script, Day is shown a copy of it to help out the production with keeping it close to the novel.
"At one point, I read a version of the script and gave them advice of what circus people might say, their jargon and lingo," she said.
This musical is a prime example of what immersion projects at the Virginia B. Ball Center can accomplish.
"Immersive learning was at the heart of this project and frankly, without the tenants of immersive learning and the things that we really hold dear and value about immersive learning, this project would have never happened," Bill Jenkins, chair of the Department of Theatre, said. "I think it's a shining example of what makes a Ball State education different from other educations."
The project is a showcase of the talent of students as well as the department.
"I think it's a test to the quality of our program that we attract that kind of student to create those kinds of projects," Turcotte said. "I want my students to have a foot up when it comes to working professionally. And this is a great stepping stone."
Although the musical will feature professionals in New York, the original cast of students are the ones who will benefit.
"You go to school for theatre to sort of not only learn about theatre but make connections and hopefully, be put in rooms with people who can help you get ahead in your career and this will do that for our students," Jenkins said.
The musical will be performed six times in New York, Oct. 11-12. Turcotte said she is hoping the musical goes to the next step, as a major theatre picks up 75 percent of the shows that are performed at this festival.
With the attention brought to the department for this prestigious opportunity, Turcotte said she hopes for a new building.
"We've kind of outgrown our building," she said. "So my dream is that this does well enough that we can attract enough attention to get a new performing arts center."
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