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Sail On! Curtain to Present Titantic to Mark Tragedy's Centennial

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Posted: Tuesday, June 22, 2010, 3:05pm

The Curtain Players Board of Directors has announced the community theatre will present the musical Titanic in April 2012 on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the legendary luxury liner's tragic sinking. President Jim Petsche and Production Manager Michael Day of the Curtain Players Board of Directors made the announcement during the June 19 season-end event at Plank's.

No director or production staff has been selected for this special presentation, but the board's goal is to have a team in place before the end of 2010 as Titanic is expected to require much advance preparation. The musical will be a highlight of the community theatre's 49th season.

The board hopes that in addition to the actual production, there will be opportunities for related programming, such as panel discussions, to illuminate the many aspects of this historic event as well as to discuss Curtain's staging of the musical.

According to Petsche and Day, the choice of Titanic provides Curtain Players not only a creative challenge, but the presentation of a quality and highly regarded offering that may not be familiar to Curtain audiences as are other Broadway musicals, and opportunities for greater engagement with Curtain Players by local performers and designers and the community-at-large.

Titanic premiered on Broadway April 23, 1997, and that season won five Tony Awards including Best Musical, Best Score (Maury Yeston), Best Book of a Musical (Peter Stone), Best Orchestrations (Jonathan Tunick) and Best Scenic Design (Stewart Laing).

More than 1,500 people died when on its maiden voyage, the HMS Titanic collided with an iceberg and in the early morning hours of April 15, 1912, sunk to the bottom of the North Atlantic Ocean. What was up to that time the finest, largest, and strongest ship in the world, Titanic was considered unsinkable by its owners and builders, which made the tragedy so incredible that the story resonates nearly a century later.