The Show

In Fall 2009, Ball State University Associate Professor of Theatre Beth Turcotte received an immersive learning grant with the Virginia B. Ball Center for Creative Inquiry for Spring 2010. With the help of the grant, she assembled a group of students with varying majors including theatre, dance, creative writing, music, and technology to write an original musical cycle about people overcoming life’s hardships. During a brainstorming session, Cathy Day’s novel The Circus in Winter was casually mentioned as a unique source material for a musical adaptation. Within the hour, Beth Turcotte contacted Ball State Professor of History Tony Edmonds who used the novel in his Introduction to American Studies class and he referred the group to Cathy Day herself, who gratefully gave us permission to adapt her acclaimed novel into a musical. The students took a trip to Peru, Indiana in November 2009 to tour the International Circus Hall of Fame Museum and walk the historic grounds that once served as the Winter Quarters for the Wallace Circus, as well as the fictionalized setting for the novel.

In Spring 2010, the group of students began the creative process of writing the musical at the Virginia B. Ball Center for Creative Inquiry. Over the course of the semester, the students went through a countless number of drafts in order to finally settle on the right combination for a theatrical production.

With the assistance of guest artists such as author Cathy Day, Tony Award-Winning Broadway actress Sutton Foster, Vice President of Samuel French Publishing Ken Dingledine, and playwright Suzan Zeder, the students received a tremendous amount of feedback and support.

In April 2010, the students performed two staged readings of the musical in Sursa Performance Hall at Ball State University and at the Drury Lane Oakbrook Terrace Theatre in Chicago. Both readings were a great success and provided the students with the constructive feedback. The group received a Provost Initiative Grant through Ball State University for Summer 2010 to further its development process with more workshop readings and a cast recording. In Fall 2011, the Ball State University Department of Theatre & Dance will produce a fully realized production of The Circus in Winter as part of their 2011-2012 Season. Please continue to check this website for additional updates and information on our upcoming readings.

Click here to
learn more about
the author and
the novel of
The Circus in Winter!