Past Productions and Events
Past Seasons
The Department of Theatre and Dance’s past productions and events reflect a dynamic history of artistic exploration, collaboration, and creative excellence. Each season showcases a diverse range of theatrical and dance works, highlighting the talents of students, faculty, and guest artists. These productions represent a fully immersive learning environment where students contribute to every aspect of the process, including performance, design, choreography, and technical production. This archive captures the department’s ongoing commitment to innovation, experiential learning, and the development of emerging artists across all areas of theatre and dance.
Previous Seasons
2025 - 2026 Season
Mad Forest: A Play from Romania, is a powerful exploration of totalitarianism, revolution, and the complex aftermath of political upheaval—but above all, it is a play about humanity and history. Though rooted in the specific context of the 1989 Romanian Revolution and the collapse of communism, the play’s themes reverberate far beyond that moment, asking urgent questions about the nature of historical time, the potential—and often futility—of social change, and the fragility of collective action. Its relevance, unsettlingly, continues to grow.
Assassins, a musical by Stephen Sondheim and John Weidman, explores the lives of nine individuals across a hundred years of our history who assassinated or attempted to assassinate the President of the United States. From John Wilkes Booth to Lee Harvey Oswald and beyond, this powerful, unnervingly funny piece examines the dark side of the American Dream. The show questions the motivations for political violence, the allure of infamy, and the enchantment of celebrity.
Arriving in the glittering opulent world of Moscow High Society, the impulsive and romantic Natasha Rostova awaits the return of her fiancé from the front lines. But when she falls under the spell of an intoxicating aristocrat, it is up to the unlikely hero, Pierre, to pick up the pieces of her shattered reputation. Inspired by a scandalous slice of Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace, this sung through electropop opera expands the possibilities for the genre with its daring score and bold storytelling.
Fall Dance presents Montclair State dance majors in their classes: freshman, sophomore, junior and senior -- showcased in diverse repertory works by faculty and guest choreographers.
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CONFEDERATES by Dominque Morisseau is a play telling the lives of two Black women 160 years apart encountering the same quest for freedom, and they struggle to overcome gender bias, and colonized institutions. Both women embark to sustain overt and covert oppressions that attempt to marginalize and suppress their greatness. Charles Anthony Burks director states, "In directing this play, I am exploring how actors exhibit the direct effects of telling the story of how racism challenges interpersonal and professional relationships. Treachery, risk and a woman's importance all play a part in maneuvering their time periods."
and Emily Orling, The Elementary Spacetime Show tells the story of Alameda: a young girl who enters a liminal void somewhere in between life and death. Alameda must pass through the eight existential trials of a cosmic Vaudevillian game show to discover the possibility that her darkness is a gift. Her journey is set to a kaleidoscopic contemporary score that bravely handles teenage suicide with both sensitivity and vibrant showmanship, blending sly humor with emotional nuance.
A fantasia inspired by E.M. Forster’s novel A Passage to India, PASSAGE is set in the fictional Country X, which is a neocolonial client of Country Y. A local doctor from Country X and a visiting teacher from Country Y begin to forge a friendship that is challenged after a fateful trip to a local attraction, exposing the complexities of cultural misunderstanding and power imbalances. A meditation on colonization, the mutability of political borders, and the elusive nature of true understanding.
Based on the novel by Dave Barry and Ridley Pearson, Peter and the Starcatcher upends the century-old story of how a miserable orphan on a ship bound for Rundoon came to be The Boy Who Would Not Grow Up. In a wildly theatrical and action-packed prequel to Peter Pan, this imaginative adventure is filled with music, mermaids, marauding pirates, and unlikely heroes. Peter and the Starcatcher playfully explores the depths of greed and despair as they test the bonds of friendship, duty and love.
Spring Dance presents Montclair State dancers in distinguished guest artist and faculty choreography, curated by the faculty artistic directors.
A highly inventive new musical by César Alvarez and Emily Orling, The Elementary Spacetime Show tells the story of Alameda: a young girl who enters a liminal void somewhere in between life and death. Alameda must pass through the eight existential trials of a cosmic Vaudevillian game show to discover the possibility that her darkness is a gift. Her journey is set to a kaleidoscopic contemporary score that bravely handles teenage suicide with both sensitivity and vibrant showmanship, blending sly humor with emotional nuance.
Bound/ Unbound, is a reimagined riff on Charles L. Mee's BIG LOVE, exploring the complexity of love, dysfunctional relationships and the ferocity forged by heartache through a non-binary lens. Originally produced in 2000 as a modern adaptation of THE SUPPLIANTS by Aeschylus, the story of fifty brides who flee to Italy to escape marrying their cousins, is expanded in this devised piece to invite queer stories & relationships and non binary gender identity & expression. How do we look at the "politics of love and gender" in a more expansive and nuanced way? How does this challenge preconceived notions of love, commitment and the freedom to choose who and how we love?
Dance Makers presents exceptional student choreography by dance majors with curation and mentorship by the faculty artistic directors.