| SNAP!
Productions scored what may be their biggest success with the Omaha debut of Quilt: A
Musical Celebtation. Scheduled to herald the arrival in Omaha ofThe NAMES Project AIDS
Memorial Ouilt, the SNAP! musical was SNAP's most ambitious production to date, with a
talented multi-racial cast of 35, ages 12 - 70, and a crew of l5. Under Keith Allerton's
direction, with musical direction provided by Kurt Kelley and choreography by Michael
Simpson and Patrick Roddy, QUILT, A MUSICAL CELEBRATION examined one 32 panel block of The
Ouilt, presenting in song, dance, and story the people who made the individual panels:
lovers, spouses, family, and friends: The musical moved rapidly through the individual stories like a ride on the
super fast roller coaster at your favorite theme park. Your emotions raced with breakneck
speed from anger to gut-wrenching grief to laughter to the warmth of a friend's love.
The characters are straight, gay, old, young, from
farms, from the inner city. Quilt covered the gamut of those lost to AIDS and the gamut of
those who made panels to remember them.
Binding the vignettes into a whole are the stories of
Wes (who is in charge of the panel making project at the Gay & Lesbian Center) and
Karen (a warm, loving, klutty straight girl). They reappeared throughout the musical and
provided the framework for the starbursts seen in the individual vignettes.
Every person who attended brought away their personal
favorite memories. From the opening chorus, "Out of Something Terrible, there is
Something Beautiful" to the closing chorus as the entire cast sings with "One
Voice," the individual stories of pain and rage and joy and triumph shined forth like
the panels of the Quilt which they represented. |
