On Monday, April 25, the Baldwin Wallace Music Theater’s Junior Class will do a tribute to Stephen Sondheim at the black box theater on the campus of Beaumont School in Cleveland Heights.  There will be one show at 7:00 pm and tickets are $15 per person.  Directed by Vicky Bussert, the program will include  songs from Sunday in the Park With George, Sweeney Todd, Gypsy, Assassins and more.  

On the heels of those tap shoes just 11 days later, the Baldwin Wallace Senior Class will do their signature Senior Showcase on Friday, May 6, also at Beaumont.  For months, the seniors have been rehearsing an original, exciting, tightly-choreographed, non-stop theatrical production to showcase each student in front of more than 200 Broadway casting directors and agents who have the power to put them on stage in regional touring productions, cruise ships, TV shows and movies - and the ultimate goal for many - on the Broadway stage.

The Senior Showcase formally takes place in Manhattan in April, but the students will reprise this program at Beaumont Friday, May 6 at 6:30 pm, repeat that show 8:30 pm -- and at the very end, when they all join hands and take that final bow, it will be the last time this group of students ever appear together on a single stage.  

For more than 15 years, the Senior Showcase was done on the Nighttown stage, always an emotional experience for the kids, their parents – and the audience, too.  This is a show you won't want to miss.  

Both programs are joint productions of the Baldwin Wallace Music Theater Department, Beaumont School and JWP Productions.  Both programs will also feature an opening act.  To buy tickets, click here.   For group sales (minimum 10 tickets): call Bruce at 216-978-2047. 

Additional Background Information

For more than a decade, Nighttown in Cleveland Heights was an integral part of the Baldwin Wallace Music Theater Department’s curriculum, giving students the opportunity to perform in a nightclub setting before a live audience, similar to the experience they would encounter as working artists. When Nighttown closed in 2020, it looked as though these budding theater professionals might lose the opportunity to hone this important aspect of their performance skills.  By luck and with connections, those students have now found a new venue to test their craft: Beaumont School.

One of Cleveland's best-kept secrets is the fact that Beaumont School, the all-girls Catholic high school in the Ursuline tradition that educates women for life, leadership and service, located in Cleveland Heights, houses a 147-seat "black box" theater, with professional sound and lights.  When Beaumont was contacted about the possibility of using the space as a training ground for B-W’s musical theater students, Wendy Hoke, president of Beaumont, readily agreed, noting the importance of American musical theater and the Great American Songbook.

Jim Wadsworth and his JWP Productions, which handled all the music at Nighttown, has been producing music events at a variety of venues in Cleveland and Akron since Nighttown closed.  He notes the move to Beaumont continues the Nighttown-Baldwin Wallace tradition, and again brings these students to Cleveland’s east side.