Great Scot April 2019 Great Scot_156_April_2019_Online | Page 87

ANOTHER BIG PRODUCTION
FOR OSMAD — MISS SAIGON
OSMaD is excited that its run of big and challenging shows continues
with the 2019 production — Miss Saigon. With auditions due to be held
in May/June, the season will open on Friday 18 October in the Geoffrey
McComas Theatre and will run to 26 October.
OSMaD’s brilliant 2018 production, Les Misérables, recently received
four Lyrebird Awards: best production, best director, best actor and best
set design in a musical. We wish to thank every patron who helped make
Les Misérables an award-winning sell-out season for OSMaD.
Miss Saigon represents Claude-Michel Schönberg and Alain Boublil’s
second major success, following Les Misérables in 1985. The storyline
is based on Giacomo Puccini’s opera, Madame Butterfly, and similarly
tells the tragic tale of a doomed romance involving an Asian woman
abandoned by her American lover. The setting of the plot is relocated to
1970s Saigon during the Vietnam War, and Madame Butterfly’s story of
marriage between an American lieutenant and a geisha is replaced by
a romance between a United States Marine and a South Vietnamese
bar girl.
From its inception, OSMaD has been most fortunate to have had
two strong leaders, helping to bring shows to life year after year. In
appreciation of this outstanding service, OSMaD has awarded the status
of Patron to Richard Beveridge (‘62) and Roslyn Turnley. It is richly-
deserved recognition of the great contribution of these two stalwarts to
OSMaD, and to amateur theatre.
OSMaD has been accepted most warmly into the amateur theatre
community, and there are many opportunities for Scotch Family members
to be involved with OSMaD as cast members or in production support
roles. OSMaD has always maintained an open recruitment policy for
cast and crew, and this has ensured we tap into Melbourne’s best – and
most certainly the resource of talent in Melbourne community theatre is
immense.
Amateur theatre is a learning environment, and we’d love to have
anyone along who is interested in live theatre. We are always looking
for volunteers to become involved in helping in front-of-house, sewing
costumes, ushering, moving set pieces, photography and more. If you’re
interested, please contact us through www.osmad.com.au.
KATHERINE MCDONALD — PRESIDENT, OSMaD
www.scotch.vic.edu.au Great Scot
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