Maze music directs new musical "The Pledge"

This past May, Valerie Maze, music director/conductor of the Music Theatre program at Elon, was part of an exciting project called "The Pledge," with book and lyrics by Mark Evan Chimsky and music by Zev Burrows.

This new musical tackles the important and sobering subject of hazing, with the goal of bringing awareness to this all too common occurrence on college campuses across the country.  From May 20-31, 2019, Valerie was Music Director and Pianist for this 10-day lab that culminated in two staged readings at the Forbes Center for the Performing Arts in Harrisonburg, Virginia.

This new work was chosen by the Madison New Works Lab at James Madison University. This lab, in its second year, chose this new musical out of many submissions to workshop in the spring. The selection team was headed up by Ruben Graciana, director of the School of Theatre and Dance at James Madison University. Alongside Stage Director Kate Arecchi, Mark Evan Chimsky, Zev Burrows and the rest of the production team, Maze spent 10 days teaching music and was involved in the revision process that is of crititcal importance in a lab setting.

The writers submitted their work in order to hear their rewrites and to try out new dialogue, music, and lyrics. This revised work was then to presented to an audience for feedback. At the culmination of the lab, Maze and the cast, comprised of two equity actors and several JMU music theatre students presented a staged reading of the musical to audiences on two evenings. At the end of each of the readings​, there was a talkback with the cast and creative team, giving the writing team something to walk away with as they move on to the next stage of development of their new work.