ASU GAMMAGE ANNOUNCES 2012-2013 BEYOND SERIES SUBSCRIPTIONS ON SALE NOW

ASU Gammage has just announced its 2012-2013 BEYOND season and subscriptions are on sale now and start at $75. The four-show series features internationally-acclaimed artists in music and dance including Tony Award®-winning choreographer Bill T. Jones and Native Alaskan artist Emily Johnson. For 21 years, the BEYOND series has evolved into a carefully curated series that brings world-class artists into the community by presenting compelling work while connecting with Valley residents through artist residency programs, master classes and public performances. Subscriptions are available by calling 480-965-3434 or at the ASU Gammage Box Office.

COUNTY OF KINGS a stage memoir by LEMON ANDERSEN
Friday, October 5 & 6, 2012 at 7 p.m.
ASU Gammage - On Stage seating Tickets: $25
Originally presented by Spike Lee at the Public Theater in New York, Lemon’s unique voice flows from hard-edged drama to street poetry, creating a vivid portrait of his adverse yet often humorous coming-of-age experiences while growing up in 80s and 90s  in Brooklyn. Andersen’s performance touches on young love, sibling rivalry, juvenile crime, addiction and ultimately personal triumph in this moving one-man journey toward self-discovery and redemption. County of Kings has been staged for American audiences from coast-to-coast, in Europe and South Africa. Andersen is a critically acclaimed and award-winning stage, film and poetry artist and a Tony® Award-winning original cast member of Russell Simmons’ Def Poetry Jam On Broadway.

CITY COUNCIL MEETING
Saturday, February 16, 2013 at 7 p.m.
ASU Gammage  - On Stage seating Tickets: $25
CITY COUNCIL MEETING is a creation of writer Aaron Landsman, director Mallory Catlett and designer Jim Findlay. The team visited local city council meetings in San Antonio, Portland, New York and Tempe to create an engaging and participatory theatrical adventure. The competing agendas, alienating rules, tedium and temper create human theater at its best.

For 18 months, ASU Gammage worked with Landsman and Catlett to involve Tempe City Council, community leaders, Arizona residents, students and local artists in the creative process. Audience will become actors, actors observe and elected officials do both as CITY COUNCIL MEETING takes you to the intersection of life and theater and just might change your perception of both.

EMILY JOHNSON/catalyst
NIICUGNI
Saturday, March 2, 2013 at 7 p.m.
ASU Galvin Playhouse Tickets: $25
Celebrated director, choreographer, curator Emily Johnson (Native Alaskan Yup'ik) presents NIICUGNI (Listen) a new dance performance, housed within a light and sound installation made of hanging fish-skin sculptures. Johnson’s almost ethereal ability to weave elements of theater, dance and art installation into a uniquely affecting experience is not to be missed. The fish-skin sculptures will be produced by local community members during her residency at ASU Gammage and will be an integral part of an unforgettable theatrical journey fusing music and dance with contemporary performance. The effect is one of taking us out of the theater and into nature, to NIICUGNI (Listen) to our connection with the Earth and our ancestors.

BILL T. JONES/ARNIE ZANE DANCE COMPANY

Play and Play: an evening of movement and music
Saturday, April 20, 2013 at 7 p.m.
ASU Gammage Tickets: $35

Two-time Tony Award® winner and contemporary performance icon Bill T. Jones returns for the final year of his three-year GAMMAGE RESIDENCY, a national model for supporting the work of leading performing artists. This year’s performance features live musicians, as the company presents Play and Play: an evening of movement and music applying Bill T. Jones’s extraordinary choreography to some of the most important Western musical works of our time. Featuring compositions by Mendelssohn and Mozart, the program highlights the joy of musicians and dancers working together. Repertory includes D-Man in the Waters (1989), a modern dance classic, as well as Spent Days Out Yonder (2001), a sublime reflection on the second movement of Mozart’s String Quartet No. 23 in F Major.

BEYOND SPECIAL ENGAGEMENT
BEYOND SUBSCRIBERS RECEIVE PRIORITY ACCESS TO TICKETS

Garrison Keillor’s A Prairie Home Companion
Saturday, January 19, 2013 at 3:45 p.m.
ASU Gammage
A Prairie Home Companion started production in 1974. Live every Saturday night. A Prairie Home Companion features comedy sketches, music and Garrison Keillor’s signature monologue, “The News from Lake Wobegon.”

One of America’s most beloved radio hosts and acclaimed humorists, Garrison Keillor (host, producer) began his radio career as a freshman at the University of Minnesota, from which he graduated in 1966.  He went to work for Minnesota Public Radio in 1969 and on July 6, 1974, he hosted the first broadcast of A Prairie Home Companion in St. Paul.  Today, some 4.3 million listeners on close to 600 public radio stations coast to coast, and beyond, tune in to the show each week.  Keillor has been honored with a Grammy, ACE and George Foster Peabody awards, the National Humanities Medal, and election to the American Academy of Arts & Letters.

ASU GAMMAGE ANNOUNCES FUND IN HONOR OF EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR’S 20th ANNIVERSARY

On Monday, July 30, ASU Gammage announced the creation of the Colleen Jennings-Roggensack fund for Cultural Participation in honor of Jennings-Roggensack’s 20 years of service at the Frank Lloyd Wright designed performing arts center located on the Tempe campus of Arizona State University.

Jennings-Roggensack has helped grow the venue into the largest university-based presenter of performing arts in the world and established its mission of Connecting CommunitiesTM, which brings the work ASU Gammage presents beyond the stage and impacts the community through shared experiences. Jennings-Roggensack has artistic, fiscal and administrative responsibility for ASU Gammage, ASU Kerr Cultural Center, with additional responsibility for non-athletic activities at Sun Devil Stadium and Wells Fargo Arena. In the past 20 years, Jennings-Roggensack distinguished herself as one of the most influential leaders in the performing arts locally, nationally and internationally.

The fund which will fund Cultural Participation programs at ASU Gammage will allow community members to participate in shared cultural experiences with artists in residence and the best arts educators from around the world. Whether it’s a child experiencing one of Gammage’s award-winning, curriculum-based programs or an incarcerated woman finding a better future through artistic expression, ASU Gammage serves more than 35,000 children and families through Cultural Participation programs.

“Creating an endowment fund ASU Gammage’s Cultural Participation programs will honor Colleen’s 20 year dedication to Connecting CommunitiesTM through the arts and ensure that ASU Gammage can continue to provide our community with access to meaningful cultural experiences," says Peter Means, Director of Development for ASU Gammage.

For more information about the Colleen Jennings-Roggensack Endowment for Cultural Participation, please call ASU Gammage’s development office at 480-965-2176.

ASU GAMMAGE IS MORE THAN JUST BROADWAY

A great university needs a great theater. That’s the quick reason for our support of ASU Gammage.

There was no better place for a formal date when we first met. Great Broadway shows and a wide variety of concerts and other performances; all in a magnificent theater. ASU Gammage was just 7 years old then and pretty classy for a young couple. Suits and cocktail dresses were the custom for theater then. As we planned to marry, season tickets were in those plans.

We still have those season tickets, though we’ve moved up from row 26. Broadway is better than ever, and we look forward to each season with excitement. It’s still a great place for today’s young (and not-so-young) couples to have a formal date! We want to make sure that they have the ASU Gammage that we have enjoyed for these 40 years. That’s why we became donors years ago and, in recent years, provided for a bequest to ASU Gammage in our estate plan.

As we have become more involved with ASU Gammage, we have learned that ticket sales only cover a fraction of the cost to operate and maintain the theater. Private philanthropy is needed to maintain the structure, especially as it approaches its 50th anniversary in 2014. Furthermore,Frank Lloyd Wright could not have imagined the technological advances in theater sound, lighting, and set movement. Donor support is vital to keep ASU Gammage as one of the top touring Broadway houses in the country.

ASU Gammage is more than just Broadway. There are many outreach programs that benefit students and the community. One of particular interest to us is Camp Broadway, which teaches students life skills as they learn about theater. Our estate gift will benefit them, as well as keep ASU Gammage as a state of the art facility.

We hope that Gammage has meant as much to you as it has to us. To ensure that ASU Gammage remains a cherished venue for future generations of students, families, and theater lovers, we encourage you to consider establishing your own legacy through an estate gift to ASU Gammage.

- Sue and Bill Ahearn

“Endowing ASU Gammage’s Cultural Participation programs will honor Colleen’s 20 year dedication to Connecting CommunitiesTM through the arts and ensure that ASU Gammage can continue to provide our community with access to meaningful cultural experiences," says Peter Means, Director of Development for ASU Gammage.

For more information about the Colleen Jennings-Roggensack Endowment for Cultural Participation, please call ASU Gammage’s development office at 480-965-2176.