As the presidential campaign trail dominates headlines, a new musical will be performed this weekend focusing on the problem of immigration -- a hot topic for the presidential hopefuls.
The Penn State New Musical Festival, in its second year, is presenting Take Me America, a brand new musical dealing with immigrants' struggle to gain citizenship in the United States, said Raymond Sage, professor of theatre and artistic director for the festival.
"Take Me America is a story of nine refugees seeking political asylum in the United States," Sage said. "It is very socially relevant because of the immigration issues it deals with."
Sage said he started the festival two years ago because there was a need for the promotion of new works at Penn State.
"The students here were not being exposed to a whole lot of new works when I first came to Penn State," he said. "This festival creates a venue where professional artists can meet students and work with them and ultimately see their pieces produced by the students."
Susan Russell, theater professor and director for Take Me America, said the festival is exciting because the writers are in attendance for all the rehearsals and performances.
"This gives [the writers] a chance to work on their pieces. It's challenging for the students because sometimes they are getting whole new pages or even songs that they have to learn," Russell said.
The cast is made up of theater students here at Penn State, and it gives them a great opportunity to see what they will be doing as young performers, Sage said.
The concept of the New Musical Festival is for both professional writers and students to get a chance to work with each other, Russell said.
She said the writers have the chance to see their work performed and work out the kinks in the process, while students get the opportunity to work with professionals and learn what it's like to go on an open reading casting.
Russell said the performance is in the style of a stage reading, meaning that the actors are performing with scripts. This adds an extra challenge to keep it exciting, she added.
"It's a large cast and it's always a challenge to get a large cast to move well. Because it's a stage reading and the students will perform with their scripts, it adds the extra challenge of performing the reading in an interesting way," she said.
Russell said the stage reading means they will not perform with a set or costumes because it is focusing on the script itself.
"Set and costuming are the last things that one worries about when producing a show. This festival is about taking the opportunity to work with the text, so we don't want to spend time building a set," Russell said.
Russell said the audience can look forward to hearing true stories about immigrants coming to America.
"This musical focuses on the discussion of immigration, which is the most vital discussion this country is having with the world," she said.
