BSC’s Theatre department absorbs new talent.

Published in The Mystician 83.5, page 6

https://www.bscmysticmedia.com/_files/ugd/628cb3_b146fbf769cd4b2094d1a1ce245728e5.pdf

The Bismarck State College’s theatre department will be presenting a new musical based on the long running popular TV series.

Spongebob Squarepants is a Broadway musical that was published on June 7, 2016 written by Kyle Jarrow, with the rights only recently being released for use in the public domain.The plot is an original story, concerning the town of Bikini Bottom in danger from a volcano called “Mt Humongous” that is going to erupt in 48 hours, forcing them to evacuate, so it is up to Spongebob, Patrick and Sandy to stop the volcano from destroying everything that they know.

“I think a story about the importance of community and friendship in the face of overwhelming social disaster can be a really important message right now, so I was surprised to see how much resonance this had with me in particular at this very moment,” Director Danny Devlin said.

The musical has received critical acclaim from many different award ceremonies, such as the Drama Desk awards, the Outer Circle Critic Awards, and it has been nominated for 15 Tony Awards for best book of a musical, costume design, lighting design, scenic design, sound design, best actor and multiple nominations for best original score.

The soundtrack is a mix of many different artists, with examples of songwriters being David Bowie, Aerosmith, The Plain White Tees, T.I, The Magnetic Zeroes, Panic! At the Disco, and Sara Barailles.

Devlin said that while the story to the musical would be the exact same, the soundtrack has been changed since the original filmed performance.

This is not the first time BSC has done an extravagant musical like Spongebob, with a track record of former performances such as Legally Blonde in 2016, Chicago in 2017, The Producers in 2018, Heathers in 2019, and a performance tour of Kiss Me Kate which was canceled because of COVID. After a couple of rough years, the theatre department has decided to return to a normal production rate .

“We felt like this year when we were coming back to a more regular production schedule,” Devlin said, “we wanted to come back with what has sort of become one of the signatures at BSC theatre, which is a big, splashy, colorful, fun musical and this just fit the bill for that.”

The musical is scheduled to perform from April 7 to April 10, with the Thursday to Saturday performances at 7:30 pm and the Sunday performance at 2:30 pm.