Tony Award-winning director-choreographer Casey Nicholaw will open the Alliance Theatre’s 2016-17 season with the world premiere of a new musical titled The Prom.
Nicholaw is one of the creative forces behind such Broadway hits as The Book of Mormon and Something Rotten!, and directed and choreographed Tuck Everlasting, which debuted on the Alliance stage early last year and is scheduled to begin previews March 31 at Broadway’s Broadhurst Theatre on West 44th Street, with most of the original cast.
The Prom, being positioned as a comedy, is based on an original idea by producer Jack Viertel. It tells the story of Emma, who becomes an outcast and makes national headlines when she wants to attend the high school prom with her girlfriend. The prom is canceled, and the well-meaning but deliterious efforts of some fading Hollywood do-gooders create chaos in Emma’s small Indiana town.
The musical will open on the Alliance’s mainstage in August.
Joining Nicholaw on the creative team are book writer Bob Martin (a Tony Award winner and the original Man in Chair in The Drowsy Chaperone); book writer and lyricist Chad Beguelin (a Tony nominee for Aladdin); and composer Matthew Sklar (a Tony nominee for The Wedding Singer).
The Alliance, under artistic director Susan V. Booth, has a history as an incubator for new musicals, including the Tony Award-winning The Color Purple and Aida, as well as Bring It On: The Musical, Bull Durham, Ghost Brothers of Darkland County, Harmony — A New Musical, Sister Act: The Musical and Twyla Tharp’s Come Fly Away.
Casting awill be announced at a later date. Season tickets, which include The Prom, go on sale in March 2016.
