The University of Georgia’s triple-threat musical theater students have added another skill to their resumes, as their newly installed exhibit goes on display at the UGA Special Collections Libraries.
The Golden Age of Broadway, a class-curated exhibit of classic Broadway musical posters and artifacts, will open in the Rotunda Gallery March 4, and the students will show off their singing, acting, and dancing skills with a special performance to celebrate the display this spring. The free event is scheduled for 7:30 p.m. Monday, March 24, and members of the university and Athens community are welcome.
The exhibit and corresponding performance are the results of two semesters of creative research by students under the guidance of George Contini, Josiah Meigs Distinguished Teaching Professor in the UGA department of theater and film studies, as well as archivists Jan Hebbard and Mazie Bowen from the Special Collections Libraries. The genesis of the project dates back to 2021, when Contini was selected as a member of the Special Collections Faculty Teaching Fellows, a program which helps faculty members to design archives-centered courses that ignite students’ curiosity and strengthen their research and critical thinking skills
As part of Contini’s Musical Theatre and American Culture class hosted last fall, students reviewed items in the Hargrett Rare Book and Manuscript Library’s Samuel Golden Theater Collection and identified 20 posters for Broadway musicals with visually striking graphic design. Students explored those musicals and choose songs they wanted to hear sung 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.
“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 said. “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 stage 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.