FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Oct. 13, 2006
Contact: Anika Mitchell Perkins
(662) 329-7124

Threadgill Series brings a bit of Broadway to Columbus on Oct. 20
  
COLUMBUS, Miss. – Mississippi University for Women’s campus community and the public will be treated to a rare evening of readings and performance on Friday, Oct. 20.
   
The 2006 Leslie F. Threadgill Lecture and Artist Series will bring a bit of Broadway to Columbus as it presents an evening of music from Elizabeth Spencer’s “Light in the Piazza” with Spencer, Patti Cohenour, Katie Clarke and Jamie Schmidt.
   
The performance will begin at 7 p.m. in Rent Auditorium, Whitfield Hall.
   
Spencer, an author and Mississippi native, will read passages from her novel, “The Light in the Piazza,” which was adapted into a 1962 feature film and a 2003 musical that made its way to Broadway and won six Tony Awards in 2005.
   
“The show just closed in July in New York after running for two years,” according to William “Peppy” Biddy, chair of the MUW Department of Music and Theatre, who noted the show was developed at the Sundance Theatre Lab, where he has worked as production manager for the past few years. “It’s going to be a special evening that we will not see here again.”
   
Three people who were a part of the actual Broadway show will be a part of the evening, he said.
   
Biddy also noted the music would be by Adam Guettel. “He’s a young and upcoming composer who won a Tony for his music, which is very sophisticated.”
   
Spencer, who was born in 1921 in Carrollton, has authored nine novels, three collections of short stories, while also working on an as-yet incomplete memoir. She was the 1996-1997 recipient of the John William Corrington Award for Literary Excellence.
   
She also will headline the slate of authors who will read and discuss their work at the 18th annual Eudora Welty Writers’ Symposium to be held at MUW Oct. 19-21.
   
Cohenour originated the following Broadway roles: Signora Naccarelli and the Margaret alternate in "Light in the Piazza" at Lincoln Center, Mary Jane in "Big River," Rosabud in "The Mystery of Edwin Drood" (New York and London), Christine in "Phantom of the Opera,” Mother Abbess in "The Sound of Music" (revival), and she understudied Nora in "A Doll’s Life."
   
She is a recipient of a Tony nomination, two Drama Desk nominations, the Clarence Derwent Award and the Theatre World Award.
   
Clarke made her Broadway debut as Clara Johnson in Lincoln’s Center’s "Light in the Piazza." While Clarke was in New York one summer participating in an intensive dance program at NYU, a friend suggested that the fair-haired soprano meet with a college buddy who was now working on Broadway as a conductor and musical director.
   
As Clarke neared the end of her last semester of college in Texas, the search was in full swing in New York for a newcomer to play Clara in the Broadway production of "Light in the Piazza."  Friends in New York called her to audition, and, within a week, the role was hers.
   
Schmidt, music director, conductor and pianist, is the founding music director for American Girl Place Theaters in Chicago and New York, for the past eight years opening and music directing all shows and cast albums of The American Girls Revue and Circle of Friends.  
   
Also a freelance musician, his Broadway shows include "Light in the Piazza," "Martin Short: Fame Becomes Me," and "Bombay Dreams;" off-Broadway: "I Love You, You're Perfect, Now Change.” He is a staff pianist for the Radio City Christmas Spectacular and also was music director, orchestrator and piano/conductor for the Long Wharf Theatre's 2004 production of "Guys and Dolls."  The orchestrations were later used to great acclaim at the Maltz Jupiter Theatre in Florida in a similar production.
   
Tickets for MUW and Mississippi School for Mathematics and Science students, faculty and staff are complimentary and underwritten by the Leslie F. Threadgill Lecture and Artist Series Endowment held by the MUW Foundation. All other tickets are $10 each. Tickets may be purchased or picked up in the MUW Office of Development in Welty Hall, Room 200. For more information, contact Mary Margaret Roberts at mmr@muw.edu or (662) 329-7151.