Cornell premieres community-based version of musical ‘Working’

Update: Live performances have been canceled due to COVID-19 concerns.

The Cornell College Department of Theatre and Dance kicks off the academic year with the musical “Working” for one weekend only, Sept. 30 and Oct. 1. 

“Everything about this show is unique,” said Visiting Artist in Theatre Patrick DuLaney, who is directing the show. “It’s a world premiere, and it will only exist for two days, two performances. It will be unlike anything you’ve seen.”

A big part of what’s unique about this show is that the script didn’t start coming to life until the first day of classes at Cornell College. Students in DuLaney’s Block 1 class, a Second Year Seminar course (SYS), created large portions of the script as part of their coursework. 

“When we ordered the rights to the show, we discovered that there’s a community-based version of the show that allows you to replace parts of the existing script with monologues created by the cast and crew,” DuLaney said. “This is how the Second-Year Seminar course came about. We even have an original song written just for our show!”

DuLaney said students took on the role of investigative journalists and playwrights in a matter of the first few days of class to develop the script. They interviewed people, transcribed the materials, and turned them into monologues for the actors.

“I am so pleased and proud of what they’ve accomplished,” DuLaney said.

The musical, which originated in 1978 and has been rewritten with the changing job market, is based on a book by the same name, “Working,” by Pulitzer Prize-winning author and broadcaster Studs Terkel. Throughout the show, actors perform songs and stories about working in America today.

“I think we can all agree that the way we think about working has changed enormously just within the past few years,” DuLaney said. “COVID has changed everything–how and when we work, even why we work. Add to that the notion of the ‘great resignation’ and ‘acting your wage’ and this show feels absolutely like the right kind of work to be creating right now.”

SYS is all about citizenship in practice and is a fundamental component of Cornell’s new Ingenuity curriculum. These seminar classes are designed to encourage creative problem-solving through hands-on experiences involving community engagement, service-learning, performances, and field trips. SYS students work throughout the class to answer: How do we use what we know to take informed action?

“I think it’s very easy to get caught up in our own little worlds, our own success and dramas and lives, all with our faces glued to screens,” DuLaney said. “I think the SYS asks students to get up and look around, see the world around them, and start to view themselves as having a place in the world. It’s when they start to view themselves as workers, careerists, full-fledged adults–and not students.”

“Working” is free and open to the public and features 13 cast members–nine students and four guest artists. It runs Friday, Sept. 30, and Saturday, Oct. 1, at 7:30 p.m. in the Plumb-Fleming Black Box Theatre in Armstrong Hall on the Cornell College campus.