Bartlett Sher ’81, Director of Award-Winning The Light on the Piazza, to Discuss Theatre at Holy Cross

WORCESTER, Mass. – Bartlett Sher '81, director of the award-winning musical, The Light on the Piazza, will discuss "Theatrical Spaces: Imaginative, Moral, Commercial, and Human" with Professor Steve Vineberg on Oct. 27 at 5 p.m. in the Rehm Library at the College of the Holy Cross. The question and answer event is free and open to the public.

Winner of six Tony Awards, five Drama Desk Awards and two Outer Critics Circle Awards, The Light on the Piazza is the work of Adam Guettel and Craig Lucas. Set in 1953, it tells the story of an American mother and daughter traveling through Italy — the daughter’s romance with a Florentine man and the mother’s determined efforts to keep them apart. The musical was produced at the Intiman Theatre in Seattle and the Goodman Theatre in Chicago before opening on Broadway in April under the auspices of the Lincoln Center Theater. The musical is currently running in the Vivian Beaumont Theater in New York.

Sher has served as artistic director of the Intiman Theatre since 2000. His many credits include Nickel and Dimed, The Dying Gaul and The Servant of Two Masters. Sher’s staging of Cymbeline, the first American Shakespearean production seen at the Royal Shakespeare Company, earned him the prestigious Joe A. Callaway Award from the Stage Directors and Choreographers Foundation.

In the summer issue of Holy Cross Magazine, Sher, who will also talk in several classes, credited his involvement in theater at Holy Cross with helping to make him a successful director. "Much of what I learned at Holy Cross I put to use every day," he said.

The event is sponsored by the department of theatre.