The Taylor Theatre Playbills collection features programs from Taylor’s stage productions, including Taylor Theatre, musicals, playback theatre, and Taylor’s Touring Company. Some operas are also included.
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Freud's Last Session
The playbill for Taylor University’s Fall 2013 performance of Freud’s Last Session by Mark St. Germain.
Freud’s Last Session focuses on psychoanalyst Dr. Sigmund Freud who has invited Oxford professor C. S. Lewis to his London home. The two men enter debate about the existence of God, love, sex, and the meaning of life – only two weeks before Freud chooses to take his own.
The play was suggested by the best selling book The Question of God by Armand M. Nicholi, Jr..
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Godspell
The playbill for Taylor University’s Spring 2013 performance of Godspell by Stephen Schwartz and John-Michael Tebelak.
Gospell is a musical telling the parables and life of Jesus found in the gospel of Matthew.
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Kiss Me, Kate
The playbill for Taylor University’s Fall 2013 performance of Kiss Me, Kate by Cole Porter and Samuel and Bella Spewack.
Kiss Me, Kate follows the story of divorcees Fred and Lilli and their onstage/offstage drama as they rehearse and perform a musical version of William Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew.
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The Curious Savage
The playbill for Taylor University’s Spring 2013 performance of The Curious Savage by John Patrick.
The Curious Savage is the story of Ethel P. Savage, an elderly lady whose husband has died and left her approximately ten million dollars. When she sets up a memorial fund for average people to pursue their dreams, her three stepchildren commit her to a sanatorium and try to discover where she has hidden the fortune. As the search for the fortune plays out the question becomes who is really crazy, the residents of the sanatorium or Ethel’s stepchildren.
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Though the Earth Give Way
The playbill for Taylor University’s Fall 2013 performance of Though the Earth Give Way by William Gebby, commissioned and presented by the Taylor Theatre Touring Company.
Though the Earth Give Way is a reimagined telling of the story of King Hezikiah and his resistance of the Assyrian siege of Jerusalem in 701 B.C.. The story is found in the Old Testament, in 2 Kings 18-20 and Psalm 46.
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But Not Destroyed: The Story of Calvin Fairbank
The playbill for Taylor University’s Fall 2012 performance of But Not Destroyed: The Story of Calvin Fairbank by William Gebby.
But Not Destroyed tells the story of Calvin Fairbank who was among forty-four persons imprisoned in the Kentucky State Penitentiary for the crime of helping African-Americans escape from slavery.
Performed by the Taylor Touring Company.
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Noises Off
The playbill for Taylor University’s Spring 2012 performance of Noises Off by Michael Frayn.
Noises Off is a farce involving the small cast of a play and how their offstage drama impacts their onstage drama.
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Proof
The playbill for Taylor University’s Spring 2012 performance of Proof by David Auburn.
Proof is the story of a young woman named Catherine, whose recently deceased father was a professor and mathematical genius. Catherine shares his genius, but fears she has also inherited her father’s mental health issues as well. The plot involves the discovery of a mathematical proof in her father’s desk, and her struggle to come to terms with her father’s legacy and her own future.
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Romeo & Juliet
The playbill for Taylor University’s Fall 2012 performance of Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare.
Romeo and Juliet is a tragedy about two young lovers from feuding families and how their relationship and deaths reconcile their families.
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Waiting for Godot
The playbill for Taylor University’s Fall 2012 performance of Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett.
Waiting for Gadot is the story of two men and their conversations as they wait for someone named Gadot, who never arrives.
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A Christmas Carol: The Musical
The playbill for Taylor University’s Fall 2011 performance of A Christmas Carol, based on the story by Charles Dickens. Music by Alan Menken, book by Mike Ockrent and Lynn Ahrens, and lyrics by Lynn Ahrens.
A Christmas Carol tells the story of elderly miser Ebenezer Scrooge, who is visited by the ghost of his deceased business partner, and the spirits of Christmas Past, Present, and Future. Through the encounters Scrooge is transformed into a kinder man.
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The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (abridged)
The playbill for Taylor University’s Fall 2011 performance of The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged) by Adam Long, Daniel Singer, and Jess Winfield.
The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged) is a parody in which all of Shakespeare’s plays are performed in merged and/or condensed form by three actors. The actors use their real names, interact with the audience, and at times improvise as they go through the plays.
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The Count of Monte Cristo
The playbill for Taylor University’s Spring 2011 performance of The Count of Monte Cristo, adapted by Charles Morey from the novel by Alexandre Dumas.
The Count of Monte Cristo is the story of Edmond Dantès, who is falsely accused of treason and is sent to prison. He and a fellow prisoner escape and discover a treasure, he returns as the Count of Monte Cristo to take revenge on the men who framed him.
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Witness for the Prosecution
The playbill for Taylor University’s Spring 2011 performance of Witness for the Prosecution by Agatha Christie.
Witness for the Prosecution tells the story of a trial of a man named Leonard Vole for the murder of a wealthy older woman who made him her principle heir. During the trial his wife, Romaine, comes to testify not in his defense, but on the side of the prosecution.
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A Streetcar Named Desire
The playbill for Taylor University’s Fall 2010 performance of A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams.
A Streetcar Named Desire follows the story of southern belle, Blanche DuBois, who has gone through a series of personal losses and moves in with her sister Stella and brother-in-law Stanley in a dilapidated New Orleans tenement.
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Crimes of the Heart
The playbill for Taylor University’s Spring 2010 performance of Crimes of the Heart by Beth Henley.
Crimes of the Heart tells the story of the three Magrath sisters, Meg, Babe, and Lenny, who reunite at their grand father’s home in Mississippi after Babe shoots her abusive husband.
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Doubt
The playbill for Taylor University’s Fall 2010 performance of Doubt by John Patrick Shanley.
Doubt: A Parable is the story of a fictional Catholic school in Bronx and the clash between the parish priest, Father Flynn, and school’s principal, Sister Aloysius, over the suspicion that Flynn molested an alter boy.
This play is performed by the faculty and staff of Taylor University.
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Hippolytus
The playbill for Taylor University’s Spring 2010 performance of Hippolytus by Euripides.
Hippolytus is the illegitimate son of Theseus, the king of Athens. The play tells how the goddess of love, Aphrodite, maliciously enacts vengeance on Hippolytus for his oath to chastity and service to the goddess of the hunt, Artemis.
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The Bald Soprano
The playbill for Taylor University’s Fall 2010 performance of The Bald Soprano by Eugène Ionesco.
The Bald Soprano: An Anti-Play follows the events of a traditional couple who invite over another couple, and are later joined by their maid and the maid’s lover. The characters engage in meaningless banter that becomes even more nonsensical as time goes on.
In this adaptation the actors play the actresses’ roles and the actresses play the actor’s roles.
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We Will Not Be Silent
The playbill for Taylor University’s October 2010 performance of We Will Not Be Silent. by William Gebby.
During the darkest days of WWII, a handful of German college students distributed thousands of anti-Nazi leaflets and worked toward unifying resistance across Germany. They called themselves the White Rose, and their faith drew them to engage in a fight that would cost them their lives. William Gebby’s brand new play celebrates the lives of these brave young people who would not and will not be silent.
Performed by the Taylor Touring Company.
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Footprints of a Pilgrim
The playbill for Taylor University’s Fall 2009 performance of Footsteps of a Pilgrim based on the book by Ruth Bell Graham and adapted by Kerry Meads and Robert Smyth.
Footprints of a Pilgrim is the story of Ruth Bell Graham recounting the story of her childhood as the daughter of missionaries in China, her marriage to Reverend Billy Graham, and beyond.
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The Secret Garden
The playbill for Taylor University’s Fall 2009 performance of The Secret Garden based on the book by Frances Hodgson Burnett with script and lyrics by Marsha Norman and music by Lucy Simon.
The Secret Garden tells the story of Mary Lennox, a young English girl from British Raj who is sent to live in Yorkshire, England with her relatives after her parents die in a cholera outbreak. As she works in a neglected hidden garden with a young gardener she begins to grow and begins to influence her sickly cousin and uncle.
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The Hobbit
The playbill for Taylor University’s Spring 2008 performance of The Hobbit based on the book by J. R. R. Tolkien adapted for theater by Patricia Gray.
The Hobbit is the story of hobbit Bilbo Baggins who is enlisted by the wizard Gandalf to aid a band of dwarves reclaim their mountain home from a great dragon.
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John, His Story
Taylor
The Playbill for the Taylor University Touring Theatre Company's 2007 production of John, His Story.
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Flowers for Algernon
The playbill for Taylor University’s Spring 2006 performance of Flowers for Algernon by David Rogers.