Broadway returns to Big Sky with homegrown, marital twist
The Warren Miller Performing Arts Center is set to present a staged reading of The Proxy Marriage, a new musical about a unique Montana law. Big Sky and Bozeman-based performers will join forces with a cast of Broadway actors for the performance set for Saturday, July 20th at 7pm. Tickets are $19.
Based on Helena-born author Maile Meloy’s short story published in The New Yorker, the story follows teenagers William and Bridey, who both have weekend jobs at a family law firm as wedding stand-ins. The firm has made an entire practice out of Montana’s proxy marriage law, which states that brides and grooms do not have to be physically present at the nuptials for the union to be legal. William and Bridey graduate and move apart to pursue their artistic dreams, but each summer their stand-in job brings them back together for a week. Fifteen years later, they begin to wonder if what they were longing for all along was each other.
The Proxy Marriage is a collaboration between Adam Gwon – whose music theater compositions have been performed on six different continents in over half a dozen languages by luminaries such as Kelli O’Hara and Audra McDonald – and Michele Lowe, author of the Broadway show The Smell of the Kill and recipient of several national awards for her plays and musicals. The reading will be directed by Marc Bruni, director of Beautiful: The Carole King Musical on Broadway, and brings back Big Sky favorites John Dossett and Michele Pawk, the Tony-Winning actress featured in Stephanie DiMaggio’s Levity, which was a huge hit in the 2018 winter season at WMPAC.
For further information or to purchase tickets for this performance and other upcoming events, visit www.warrenmillerpac.org. •