Image: The University of Georgia’s Special Collections Libraries and students from the department's Musical Theatre Certificate Program will celebrate great musicals of Broadway’s Golden Age (1944-1974) through an exhibit and performance this spring. “The Golden Age of Broadway,” an exhibit of classic Broadway musical posters and connected artifacts, will go on display in the Rotunda Gallery of the Special Collections Building beginning March 4. “How to Make a Musical: A Concert of Golden Age Show Tunes” will take place on Monday, March 24 at 7:30 p.m. in the auditorium of the Special Collections Building. Both the exhibit and event are free and open to the public. These projects are the result of two semesters of creative research by students under the guidance of Professor George Contini from the UGA Department of Theatre and Film and archivists Jan Hebbard and Mazie Bowen from the Hargrett Rare Book and Manuscript Library. As part of Contini’s Musical Theatre and American Culture class hosted last fall, students reviewed items in the Samuel Golden Theater Collection and identified 20 posters for Broadway musicals with visually striking graphic design. Students explored those musicals and chose songs they wanted to hear live in concert. That list was then passed on to students in Contini’s Spring 2025 class Musical Theatre Showcase, comprised of students from the Musical Theatre Certificate Program, who have created a musical revue of mashups from the selected musicals. Contini was selected to become part of the Special Collections Faculty Teaching Fellows in 2021, a program which helps faculty members to design archive-centered courses that ignite students’ curiosity and strengthen their research and critical thinking skills. “Special Collections has a surprising amount of theatre ephemera and artifacts which provide a tangible and fun entry for students to explore the breadth of musical theatre history and its performance”, Contini notes. “In addition to getting to know the Samuel Golden Theater Collection, the musical history class also spends time exploring photographs and ephemera from the vaudeville era. These collections allow students to feel history come alive and to appreciate the library’s holdings on a totally different creative level.” The concert on March 24 will present standards from familiar titles like Brigadoon, Cabaret, Hair, and Kiss Me Kate. But it will also highlight songs from lesser-known shows such as Dear World, It’s a Bird It’s a Plane It’s Superman, Lost in the Stars, and No Strings. The performance offers UGA’s up and coming Broadway performers the opportunity to present these underappreciated tunes to a wider audience. Launched in 2019, the Musical Theatre Certificate Program provides students majoring in Theatre, Dance, or Music with training that focuses on the particular demands of performing musical theatre. Students graduating with the certificate have gone on to win competitions, work in the industry, and study in graduate programs. To view the exhibit, visit the UGA Special Collections Building on the UGA campus. Galleries are open to visitors for free from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. weekdays, with extended evening hours until 7 p.m. on Tuesdays and Thursdays. For more information or to schedule a tour, visit libs.uga.edu/scl.
