Musical Written by YSU Professor to Premiere This Weekend

YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio – A musical comedy written by a Youngstown State University theater professor will get its world premiere this weekend.

“Pete the Penguin’s Vintage Variety Show: A Musical Comedy Extravaganza” will start a two-weekend run Friday, Nov. 22, in Ford Theater, inside Bliss Hall on the YSU campus.

The show was written by professor Adam Day Howard of the YSU theater department. Howard will also direct the production and conduct the live musical ensemble.

“Pete the Penguin’s Vintage Variety Show” is about a theater troupe that sets out to do a vaudeville variety show but quickly realizes that the script is woefully dated and problematic and cannot possibly be presented to the audience as is. But because the troupe has no other choice, it presses on with the show, changing the script on the fly.

Things naturally go wrong from the start, and in crazy ways.

The show is in the same vein as the “The Play that Goes Wrong,” according to Howard, referring to the slapstick comedy that premiered in London in 2012 and on Broadway in 2017.

The genesis of “Pete the Penguin’s Vintage Variety Show” was borne of Howard’s love of old-school theater – and his research into it.

“I was raised on movie musicals – Ginger Rogers, Fred Astaire, Judy Garland … and British panto theater,” Howard said. “All of that is Vaudeville related. And I always found it funny that people think that because something is old, it’s more wholesome. I did a lot of research and found that those old scripts are unbelievably inappropriate and racist and sexist, and deal in stereotypes.”

That’s the lesson that the theater troupe in Howard’s show also learns – albeit too late to find a new script.

Discovering that the script is not usable is merely the first thing that goes wrong in the musical. When the troupe is forced to improvise, things go from bad to worse.

“It’s an actor’s nightmare,” Howard said.

For the musical numbers in the show, Howard used old tunes that are in the public domain. 

“Our oldest song is actually from 1899,” he said. “I intentionally chose music that was public domain because not only is it stylistically appropriate, but it’s all stuff that has been used in vaudeville shows before.”

While the YSU Theatre production will be the first public performances of “Pete the Penguin,” the show could easily resurface in the future at other theaters or colleges – but with some alterations.

“It can be adapted to any location,” Howard said, and the title can also be changed to make it relevant to another city or university.

“Pete [the Penguin] is like Godot,” Howard said, referring to the never-seen title character in “Waiting for Godot,” the cryptic Samuel Beckett play. “They keep waiting for him, but he never shows up.” 

After the YSU run, Howard intends to reformat the script to make it easier to insert a different school mascot or hometown. He’ll then make it available to other theaters.

“I think it has some legs,” he said.

Howard was born in Youngstown, grew up near Kent and was educated at the Royal Conservatory in Scotland. He taught at Texas Tech and then in Spain before moving back to Ohio after the pandemic and taking a position at YSU teaching musical theater.

He has written other theater pieces that were produced at Texas Tech, and is a contributing writer to the musical drama “From Up Here.”

“Pete the Penguin” is the first Ohio premiere of one of his shows, and Howard said he’s excited about it. 

A YSU celebrity – or maybe two – is expected to make a cameo appearance in the show, but Howard would not divulge who it will be.

The cast of “Pete the Penguin” includes  Cyrus Dzikowski, Lauren Ladd, Ben Podnar, Samantha Cox, Ilse Zijlstra, KJ Hudson and Vixen Atwood.

Faculty crew members include costume designer Katherine Garlick and scenic carpenter Gunnar Carwile.

Performances will take place at 7:30 p.m. Friday and Saturday, Nov. 22 and 23, and 2 p.m. Sunday, Nov. 24, in Ford Theater, lower level of Bliss Hall.

Tickets are $16 ($12 for seniors) and can be purchased in advance HERE or by calling 330 941 3105. Tickets will also be sold at the box office before the show.

Howard was most recently in the news last summer, when he led a group of YSU theater students to the world-renowned Fringe Festival in Edinburgh, Scotland, where the group performed the musical comedy “Here There Be Dragons” 10 times.

Howard was the music director of that show during its original Off-Broadway run two years ago. The Fringe performances, he said, drew capacity crowds and were very successful.

Pictured at top: Ilsa Zijlstra, Pete the Penguin and Cyrus Dzikowski in “Pete the Penguin’s Vintage Variety Show: A Musical Comedy Extravaganza.”

Copyright 2024 The Business Journal, Youngstown, Ohio.