Celebrating the Downtown Musicals of Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman: A One…

Celebrating the Downtown Musicals of Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman: A One-Night-Only Live Event

Award-winning Broadway, film, and television songwriters Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman, of Hairspray fame, recollect the birth of their legendary careers on the Lower East Side club scene with an evening of video, conversation, and vocal performance. Columnist Michael Musto, Broadway actors Laura Kenyon and Jake Ryan Flynn, as well as punk rocker turned television star Annie Golden, who all appeared in Shaiman and Wittman’s early productions, join them for a celebration of the pioneering, gender-bending, pop-cult musicals they staged in way off-Broadway hotspots in the 1980s, such as Club 57, Danceteria, the Saint, and Limelight. Remembering shows like Trojan Woman set on the Las Vegas strip, the Barbie and Ken inspired Livin' Dolls, and the raucous generation of downtown performers with whom they collaborated, this evening revisits the time when they found themselves “too rock and roll for theater, and too theater for rock and roll." The event highlights in a two-week retrospective of performance videos in the Club 57: Film, Performance, and Art in the East Village, 1978–1983 exhibition galleries from February 5 to 18. This event will be live-streamed.