{"id":822,"date":"2014-10-05T18:08:00","date_gmt":"2014-10-05T18:08:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ebzbproductions.ebzb.org\/serena-ebhardt-directs-world-premiere-of-new-johnny-johnson-musical-with-book-by-paul-green-and-music-by-kurt-weill\/"},"modified":"2014-10-05T18:08:00","modified_gmt":"2014-10-05T18:08:00","slug":"serena-ebhardt-directs-world-premiere-of-new-johnny-johnson-musical-with-book-by-paul-green-and-music-by-kurt-weill","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ebzb.org\/WPress\/2014\/10\/05\/serena-ebhardt-directs-world-premiere-of-new-johnny-johnson-musical-with-book-by-paul-green-and-music-by-kurt-weill\/","title":{"rendered":"Serena Ebhardt directs World Premiere Of New Johnny Johnson Musical With Book by Paul Green and Music by Kurt Weill"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\nContact:<\/span><\/div>\n

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\nDavid Navalinsky
\nUNC Department of Dramatic Art
\n(919) 962\u00ad1557
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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
\nOCTOBER 6, 2014
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Kenan Theatre Company Presents World Premiere Of New <\/span>Johnny Johnson <\/span>Musical
\nWith Book by Paul Green and Music by Kurt Weill
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Chapel Hill, NC \u2014 <\/span>The world premiere of the new edition of <\/span>Johnny Johnson <\/span>by Paul
\nGreen and Kurt Weill<\/span>, <\/span>with text and music not heard since 1937, will be staged at the University of North Carolina.
\nPerformances will take place in the Kenan Theatre, Center for Dramatic Art on Thursday, November 20th at 8pm,
\nFriday, November 21st at 8pm (post\u00adshow discussion), Saturday, November 22nd at 8pm (pre\u00adshow symposium),
\nSunday, November 23rd at 2pm, and Monday, November 24th at 5pm. Tickets are $10, $5 for students. For
\nreservations and information, please visit <\/span>http:\/\/drama.unc.edu\/johnnyjohnson\/
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It is World War I. The United States of America, having pledged to remain neutral, is pulled into the fight in order to
\nmake the world safe for democracy \u201cover there.\u201d Lowly American tombstone cutter, Johnny Johnson, has been
\npersuaded to enlist in the U.S. army both by his sweetheart, Minny Belle Tompkins, and by President Woodrow
\nWilson\u2019s promise of \u201ca war to end all wars.\u201d But confronted by the horrors of the trenches in France, he is outraged
\nat the absurdity of it all, and by dint of laughing\u00adgas, he fools the Allied generals into calling a cease\u00adfire. Johnny is
\narrested, shipped back to America, and locked up in a lunatic asylum for his \u201cpeace monomania.\u201d Released some
\ntwenty years later, he makes a living selling handmade toys as the trumpets of war once more sound in the distance.
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This premiere features modern dance created by choreographer Heather Tatreau from UNC\u2019s Department of Exercise
\nand Sport Science. Additionally the flexible set design by Julia Warren is saturated with archival photos projected
\nonto non\u00adtraditional surfaces and curated by Cameron Kania. Director Serena Ebhardt\u2019s vision reveals the context of
\nJohnny Johnson\u2019s journey by including relevant historical and cultural events of the time period not mentioned in
\n<\/span>
\nthe text \u2014 from silent film stars to lynchings to women\u2019s suffrage. The cast is composed of UNC Students, 18 \u00ad 22
\nyears\u00adold, the same age of soldiers who sacrificed their lives in the \u201cwar to end all wars\u201d one \u00adhundred years ago.<\/span>
\n
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\nWhen the German\u00adJewish composer Kurt Weill sought exile in the United States in September 1935, he wanted to
\ncontinue his work in musical theater begun by way of his collaborations in Berlin in the late 1920s with Bertholt
\nBrecht, including <\/span>Die Dreigroschenoper <\/span>(<\/span>The Threepenny Opera<\/span>) and <\/span>Aufstieg und Fall der Stadt Mahagonny <\/span>(<\/span>Rise
\nand Fall of the City of Mahagonny<\/span>). These were hard\u00adhitting political works that used music in new theatrical ways
\nto support a radical political agenda.
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\nIn New York, Weill teamed up with the left\u00adwing Group Theatre, who put him in contact with the prominent North
\nCarolina playwright, Paul Green, who at that time was on the faculty at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
\nThe Group\u2019s first production (in 1931) had been Green\u2019s <\/span>The House of Connelly<\/span>, and his interests in theatrical music
\nwere well known. Weill visited Chapel Hill in May 1936 (staying at the Carolina Inn), and during the summer he and
\nGreen worked together with the Group on <\/span>Johnny Johnson<\/span>, which opened on Broadway on 19 November, 1936 (Lee
\nStrasberg was the director). It was intended to be the first of three collaborations between the composer and
\nplaywright; in 1937, Green asked Weill to write the music for <\/span>The Lost Colony <\/span>(1937), and that same year they worked
\non a historical pageant celebrating the 150th anniversary of the signing of the U.S. constitution\u2014but neither came to
\nfruition, and <\/span>The Lost Colony<\/span>\u2019s music was instead written mostly by the North Carolina composer Lamar Stringfield.
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\nJohnny Johnson <\/span>was picked up with some enthusiasm by the Federal Theatre Project, with productions in Boston
\nand Los Angeles in May 1937. Here Green and Weill sought to restore some of the drastic cuts to the work that the
\nGroup Theatre had made in the run up to the premiere: given that the Group was committed to Stanislavski\u2019s acting
\n\u201cmethod,\u201d it had grown more and more nervous about the music. However, that more complete FTP version of
\n<\/span>Johnny Johnson <\/span>has since lain hidden in the archives; those few productions of the work since 1936\u201337 were based
\non an incomplete, inadequate text.
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\n
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\nSome of this archival material survives in the Southern Historical Collection in UNC\u2019s Wilson Library, some in the
\nNational Archives (College Park, MD), and some in the Irving S. Gilmore Music Library at Yale University. These
\nnewly uncovered sources provided the basis for the critical edition of <\/span>Johnny Johnson <\/span>prepared by Tim Carter, David
\nG. Frey Distinguished Professor of Music at UNC and recently issued by the Kurt Weill Foundation for Music. This
\nedition won the Claude V. Palisca Award of the American Musicological Society for an outstanding scholarly edition
\nor translation in the field of musicology published during 2012.
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\n
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The world premiere of the new <\/span>Johnny Johnson <\/span>is led by a dedicated production team. <\/span>Serena Ebhardt, Paul &
\nElizabeth Green Scholar and UNC alumna, serves as director.<\/span> Dr. Louise Toppin, professor and chair of the UNC
\nmusic department, serves as musical director. Heather Tatreau serves as choreographer. Dr. Evan Feldman serves as
\nconductor. David Navalinsky, director of undergraduate productions of the UNC Department of Dramatic Art serves
\nas producer.
\n<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\n
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\nJohnny Johnson <\/span>is a major collaboration between UNC\u2019s Department of Dramatic Art and Department of Music and
\nis part a year\u00adlong conversation at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill during 2014\u00ad2015 focused on the
\nlegacy of World War I. The World War I Centenary Project features undergraduate and graduate courses, seminars,
\nlectures, conferences, workshops, exhibitions, dramatic performances, music and dance events, and workshops for
\nK\u00ad12 teachers. For more information, visit <\/span>www.iah.unc.edu\/WWI<\/span>.
\n<\/span>
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\nKenan Theatre Company <\/span>http:\/\/drama.unc.edu\/ktc\/<\/span><\/div>\n

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\nFacebook \u00ad Kenan Theatre Company <\/span>https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/KenanTheatreCompany<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
EbzB Productions – Your World Is Our Stage!
\nhttp:\/\/www.ebzb.org<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Contact: David Navalinsky UNC Department of Dramatic Art (919) 962\u00ad1557 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE OCTOBER 6, 2014 Kenan Theatre Company Presents World Premiere Of New Johnny Johnson Musical With Book by Paul Green and Music by Kurt Weill Chapel Hill, NC \u2014 The world premiere of the new edition of Johnny Johnson by Paul Green and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[17,48,67],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-822","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-arts-in-education","category-lifetime-learning","category-serena-ebhardt"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ebzb.org\/WPress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/822","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ebzb.org\/WPress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ebzb.org\/WPress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ebzb.org\/WPress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ebzb.org\/WPress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=822"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ebzb.org\/WPress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/822\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ebzb.org\/WPress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=822"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ebzb.org\/WPress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=822"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ebzb.org\/WPress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=822"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}