2008
American Broadway Musical A Huge Hit in Russian Far East
Thanks to the ECA-funded “Cultural Envoy” program, Vladivostok enjoyed the fruit of the artistic labors of two Cultural Envoys Bud Coleman of the University of Colorado at Boulder, and Clare Henkel, a costume designer of the Colorado Shakespeare Festival. Coleman, a skilled choreographer of numerous musicals staged in the United States, and Clare Henkel, very successfully carried out their Cultural Envoy project in Vladivostok by staging Sondheim’s musical “Company” at the Fine Arts Academy for enthusiastic audiences of students and the general public. For the first time in Primorye, a Broadway musical was staged, capitalizing on the local talent of students from the Academy of Fine Arts. The project was a huge success among several hundred of students, artists, and the broader community who came to see it, and the project contributed immensely to promoting American culture and future student and faculty exchange. Additionally, during their three-week stay in town, the cultural envoys conducted musical and theatre dance workshops, had numerous rehearsals-something that helped prepare the musical in record time-- and also gave several talks on American and Russian theatre, the nuances of American design, the process for designing Company at major universities, as well as a presentation at the American Corner. Several TV companies and other mass media made many coverage of rehearsals, master classes, seminars, lectures and certainly the premier performance.