CHAMPAIGN, Ill. – University of Illinois senior Alissa Norby did something completely different for her senior project in theater: She produced a sold-out concert in Chicago starring the Tony Award-winning actress Alice Ripley.
“My senior project is definitely an anomaly,” Norby said. The form of the required project is left up to the student: Some write research papers; some do internships; some direct shows at the Armory Free Theatre on campus.
J.W. Morrissette, the chair of the theater studies program, put Norby’s show into context this way: “It is incredibly rare that part of Alissa’s senior project was able to be combined with such a high-level professional experience. … Alissa is exactly the kind of student that takes her education and puts it into practice.”
The show Norby produced, “Daily Practice: The Acoustic Sessions,” featured Ripley performing songs from her CD by the same name. The 150-seat Stage 773 theater sold out a week before the May 2 show. “It was a phenomenal success,” Norby said.
Norby’s studies have focused on arts management and administration, having outgrown her initial yen to perform during her high school musical years.
“I would come home after rehearsals and just rant to my parents or to my bird, whoever was willing to lend an ear, about everything that was wrong with the production, and also about everything that was right,” she said. “I had an inclination to critique and to assess both the artistic and the commercial viability of a show.”
For several years, she channeled that inclination into reviews, writing for theater magazines in Chicago, California and New York. She now owns and edits the website showbizchicago.com. She also worked in promotions for the television hit “Glee,” and is in charge of promotions and marketing for two other Chicago productions – the Midwest premiere of the Tony-award winning Broadway musical “Passing Strange,” and a Broadway-bound musical called “White Noise,” produced by Whoopi Goldberg. Like “Next to Normal” (the Pulitzer Prize-winning show that brought Ripley to Chicago), these musicals have more than just show tunes; they have social messages – identity, racism, mental illness – that inspire Norby. “I’ve hopefully been able to use my passion for the material to really help get the word out there and start that coveted word-of-mouth buzz,” she said.
She has finally realized that the role that suits her best is producer.
“It’s the marriage between business administration and artistic administration. You have both financial and artistic input,” she said, citing producers Gigi Pritzker (“Million Dollar Quartet”), David Merrick (“Funny Girl”) and Cameron Mackintosh (“Cats,” “Les Miserables,” “Mary Poppins”) as her heroes.
Norby, 24, of Chicago, dreams of making musicals once again as relevant as they were in Merrick’s heyday, when show tunes were featured on pop radio, Broadway was the birthplace of stars, and theater targeted mass audiences, pointing to “Wicked” as an example of a musical that has become a cultural phenomenon.
“It shows us that Broadway can still be relevant, can still be topical, can still resonate with audiences, just as it did when Rogers and Hammerstein were writing,” she said.
If she accomplishes her dream, it won’t surprise Morrissette. “I have no doubt that we can expect incredibly wonderful things from Alissa in the future,” he said. “This is clearly just the beginning.”
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