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Marc Blitzstein's The Cradle Will Rock at Boston University

Dec. 07, 2016

Marc Blitzstein's <em>The Cradle Will Rock</em> at Boston University

This month, The School of Theatre at the College of Fine Arts at Boston University presents Marc Blitzstein’s The Cradle Will Rock in a run of five performances opening December 14 at Boston’s Calderwood Pavilion. The production is directed by Emily Ranii with music direction by Catherine Stornetta and choreography by McCaela Donovan.

Set in fictional Steeltown, USA, Blitzstein's allegory of corporate corruption and greed pits Larry Foreman, who is trying to unionize the town's workers, against rapacious steel tycoon Mr. Mister and a group of prominent anti-union agitators. The good-hearted prostitute Moll and down-and-out Harry Druggist get caught up in the struggle, which culminates in the workers' rising up in a passionate finale. Blitzstein’s rousing score blends arias and recitative with popular song, jazz, chorales, and marches.

Director Emily Ranii comments that “as a theatre artist, it is simultaneously terrifying and gratifying when art and life mirror each other.” She continues: 

The characters in The Cradle Will Rock are on the precipice, forced to choose between their souls and their survival, their hearts and their bodies. Eighty years after Marc Blitzstein wrote his operetta in the midst of the Great Depression, we find ourselves in yet another era in which there is nowhere near enough to go around. How each of us responds to overwhelming need on a daily basis defines who we are.

For more information on Marc Blitzstein, visit eamdc.com.

Marc Blitzstein
The Cradle Will Rock (1937)
a play in music
libretto (Eng) by Marc Blitzstein
for 5 mezzo-sopranos, alto, tenor, 5 baritones, 2 bass-baritones, 3 basses, male octet and chorus
1(pic).0.2(1.bcl).0.asax(cl).tsax(cl)-0.2.1(tenor-bass).0-timp.perc-pno.acc-gtr(banjo, Hawaiian gtr or pedal steel gtr)-str
[optional: bugles (trumpets or flugelhorns), fifes (piccolos), side drums]
120’ 

Also available:
The Cradle Will Rock: orchestrations by Josh Clayton
a play in music
libretto (Eng) by Marc Blitzstein
for 5 mezzo-sopranos, alto, tenor, 5 baritones, 2 bass-baritones, 3 basses, male octet and chorus
Reed 1 — Flute, Piccolo, Bb Clarinet and Alto Saxophone; Reed 2 — Bb Clarinet, Soprano Saxophone and Alto Saxophone; Reed 3 — Bass Clarinet, Bb Clarinet, Tenor Saxophone and Baritone Saxophone; Bb Trumpet; Tenor and Bass Trombone; Percussion: Drum Set Woodblock, Bass Drum Castanets, Suspended Cymbal Maracas (or Afuche), Timpani (2 Drums) Claves, Bells Tambourine, Telephone (Sound Effect) Sandpaper Blocks, Triangle, Siren; Piano; Accordion; Guitar, Banjo and Lap Steel Guitar; Violin I; Violin II; Viola; Cello; Bass (w/E string extension to low C)
120’

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