Oklahoma Youth at Florida Academy of Performing Arts

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2. Oklahoma Youth

Rodgers & Hammerstein's Oklahoma: Youth Edition is a one-hour adaptation of the beloved musical, designed especially for young performers.Oklahoma is Rodgers & Hammersteins first collaboration and remains, in many ways, their most innovative, setting the standards and rules of modern musical theatre. In a Western territory just after the turn of the 20th century, a high-spirited rivalry between local farmers and cowboys provides a colorful background for Curly, a charming cowboy, and Laurey, a feisty farm girl, to play out their love story. Their romantic journey, as bumpy as a surrey ride down a country road, contrasts with the comic exploits of brazen Ado Annie and hapless Will Parker in a musical adventure embracing hope, determination and the promise of a new land. Oklahoma! opened at the St. James Theatre on Broadway on March 31, 1943. At that time, the longest-running show in Broadway history had run for three years. Oklahoma! surpassed that record by two more years, running for a marathon 2,212 performances. The US national tour played for an unprecedented ten and a half years, visiting every single state and playing before a combined audience of more than 10 million people. In 1947, Oklahoma! opened at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, London, where it ran for 1,548 performances, the longest run of any show up to that time in the 267-year history of the theatre. In 1953, the Oklahoma State Legislature named Oklahoma the official state song. Oklahoma! returned to Broadway several times, most recently in a reconceived and critically acclaimed 2019 revival directed by Daniel Fish. In this adaptation for pre-high school students, the content has been edited to better suit younger attention spans, but all the elements that make this show a classic remain. We are so excited to present this classic for you.