The History of the World in 100 Performances with Adam Gopnik

Some nights in a theatre are just nights in a theatre. And some of them quietly rearrange everything that comes after. Adam Gopnik, longtime New Yorker essayist, brings his singular gift for finding the whole world inside a small moment to Theatre Aspen for four performances only.

Each show will combine live performances, interviews and enchanting story telling for a look at Theatre history like you’ve never seen it before!

September 2nd, 7pm | September 3rd, 4pm

The Night A Chorus Line Opened on Broadway

On July 25th, 1975, a new musical, marinated and readied at New York’s not-for-profit Public Theatre, opened on Broadway. The subject: the lives of the under-celebrated, under-rewarded Broadway ensemble dancers. The format swept away the older styles of the musical and became the most honored and admired show of its time, and eventually one of the longest running in Broadway history. A Chorus Line was made for the post-Watergate world and its insistence on the truth made it alive on the stage as a real moment in time, not a fantasy to escape into. It remains one of the handful of Broadway musicals – with Oklahoma!, Hamilton among the few others – that define a whole period of American life. Join Adam and special guest, Donna McKechnie, the Tony award winning actress who originated the largely autobiographical starring role of Cassie in A Chorus Line for a look at this history-making show from a whole new perspective.

September 2nd, 4pm | September 3rd, 7pm

Ella Fitzgerald: The Night a Legend Found Her Voice

One ordinary but auspicious Wednesday night in New York, November 21st , 1934, a nervous fifteen-year-old girl stepped on stage at Harlem’s Apollo Theatre. She intended to enter the amateur dance competition, but in the face of superior competition, she began to sing. Her name was Ella Fitzgerald. From a single afternoon in uptown Manhattan, began a great American musical journey, which would take Ella from the height of the swing era into her long relationship with the producer Norman Granz — creating the series of “Songbook” recordings of classic American songs, from Porter to Arlen and Carmichael. What really happened that day? Adam will explore the evolution of jazz into the thirties, the values of swing, the role of the Jewish-owned but Black-frequented Apollo in the evolution of New York culture – and the taut tightrope between the demands of jazz and the delights of the popular song that Ella walked her whole life. Plus, what does this means in the twenty first century? Join Adam and special guest Judith Tick, author of Elle Fitzgerald: The Jazz Singer Who Transformed American Song and special guest performer, Catherine Russell will weave the songs of Ella into the performance.

Two evenings. Two performances each. Two nights on which the future arrived early and nobody in the room quite knew it yet.