VoxLab 2026 Presentations
Please join us Friday, July 17 @ 7pm and Saturday, July 18 @ 6pm for presentations of this year's projects including Dartmouth alumni, guest artists and students from our THEA 65 Summer Theater Lab class.
Friday, July 17 - 7pm
beginning in the Bentley Theater
Please Hold will present at 7pm in the Bentley Theater, after which we will relocate to the Morris Recital Hall for a reading of Maybe Next Life.
Please Hold is co-created and performed by Olivia Gilliatt '08 and Deby Xiadani '15.
Fourteen stories underground, the Resistance waits. With a landline phone... or maybe several. Will the signal finally come, today—the one that sets the Future in motion? In this work-in-progress, Deby Xiadani and Olivia Gilliatt will combine their penchants for antic staging with their love of clowning and physical theater techniques into some kind of dynamic hybrid performance. With a sense of imminent dread, some rolling chairs, and LOTS of tangling cords, we are excited to create a compelling, funny and physically daring piece!
Maybe Next Life with music and lyrics by Michael Blum '15, Haley Joelle & Lily Williams, book by Jessica Welch and directed by Lillian King '07.
An intimate one-act musical with a pop-influenced score about the crossroads of life, the cost of following one’s dreams, and the haunting question: what if you had chosen differently? Maybe Next life follows Madeline, a struggling ballet dancer torn between marrying, or pursuing a last-minute, life-changing offer. When Madeline uncovers the door to multiple alternate realities her life could take, each with its own joys and heartbreaks, gains and sacrifices…which one will she choose?
Saturday, July 18 - 8pm
Morris Recital Hall
What Is A Revolution Without Dancing? will present at 6pm, in the Morris Recital Hall. Following a brief intermission, Dreaming of Augustus Washington will hold a listening party of selections from the musical.
What Is A Revolution Without Dancing? is written by Stephanie Greenwood '15 and directed by Katie Orenstein '23
In a time of civil unrest, Mia, a sculptor who is feeling utterly useless to the movement, convinces Will, a prominent activist, to pose for a statue. But then Will's statue starts to speak. Based on the myth of Pygmalion and Galatea, What is a Revolution Without Dancing is a new play about whether art matters at all, being sick of the phrase ‘now more than ever,’ and who we put on a pedestal and why.
Dreaming of Augustus Washington with music & lyrics by José Joaquín García, Jonathan Hardy, and Patricia Herrera '96, book by José Joaquín García, Rider Babbit and Patricia Herrera '96, music direction by Jonathan Hardy
Dreaming of Augustus Washington is a powerful new musical about a pioneering Black daguerreotypist, educator, and abolitionist in 1847 Hartford. Inside his portrait studio, Augustus uses the camera to affirm the dignity and humanity of Black life in a nation that denies it. But as the country moves toward Civil War and the rights of free Black Americans erode, he and his wife Cordelia face a difficult choice: fight for a future in America or seek uncertain freedom in Liberia. Blending early African American hymnody with blues, jazz, and gospel, this moving work explores faith, identity, and the courage to imagine a different future.
