Black-and-white drawing of a person screaming with wide eyes and open mouth; the background repeats the word “PANIC” in bold, capital letters.

Show/Boat: A Conversation

Show/Boat: A Conversation

This event has been rescheduled for Wednesday, February 5 @ 6:30PM (originally scheduled for Tuesday, January 28 @ 6:30PM).

Join Professor Laurence Maslon (NYU Tisch) and Professor Michael Dinwiddie (NYU Gallatin) for a conversation on the history, significance, and legacy of Show Boat – including the reimagined staging at NYU Skirball in January 2025 – in the NYU Skirball Lower Lobby.

Show Boat – a 1927 musical with a score by Jerome Kern, book and lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II, based on Edna Ferber’s 1926 novel – is universally recognized by scholars of American theater and musical theater as a seminal text and a groundbreaking (and popular) addition to the Broadway canon. The musical was groundbreaking in its use of narrative, race, American culture, gender politics, and epic storytelling back in 1927. Show/Boat: A River will be the first production of Show Boat since it has entered the public domain and therefore the first production that can be reinterpreted without any restrictions from the original rights holders.

Professors Dinwiddie and Maslon will hold a free-form discussion about how Show Boat continues to engage, enrage, entangle, and entertain audiences after nearly a century in the spotlight of American culture.

Free and open to the public.

artists

Michael D. Dinwiddie

Jennifer Krasinski