UCLA students join New York performers in ‘Lost in the Stars’
SITI Company partnered with interim dean David Roussève to bring the show to Royce Hall
Set in South Africa during apartheid, the musical "Lost in the Stars" by Kurt Weill raises contemporary issues of race relations and inequality. The New York-based theater group SITI Company partnered with choreographer and interim dean David Roussève to bring the show to the Royce Hall—the first professional production of this play in Los Angeles since the 1950s.
"The curtain will open on a train filled with South Africans traveling to Johannesburg during apartheid. The instrumental music will go silent and the characters will begin to segregate on stage, singing, “White man go to Johannesburg, he come back, he come back / Black man go to Johannesburg, never come back, never come back.”
New York-based theater group SITI Company will be performing Kurt Weill’s 1949 musical “Lost in the Stars” at Royce Hall on Saturday and Sunday, featuring a chorus including several UCLA students and alumni.
This will be the first professional production of this play in Los Angeles since the 1950s, said Jeffrey Kahane, the show’s conductor and Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra music director. The apartheid-era story and genre-crossing music of “Lost in the Stars” are timeless, carrying the eternal message of racial struggles that can still be felt today, said Chris Hunter, a fourth-year music student and chorister.
The play, set during the South African apartheid during the second half of the 20th century, tells the tale of a black priest’s son, who robs a white man’s house, shoots him and is hung.
The plot can be connected to the racial inequality that is still an issue today in the United States, said Dominic Delzompo, a 2016 alumnus and member of the chorus.
“Even 50 years later, people are still treated unfairly because of their skin tones,” Delzompo said. “It is a very timely piece.”
Kahane teamed up with Anne Bogart, co-artistic director of SITI Company, and David Roussève, choreographer and interim dean of the School of the Arts and Architecture, to bring the show to the Royce Hall stage."— Emanuela Boisbouvier, Jan. 26
Read the full article at the Daily Bruin website.