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Welcome back!
Columbia College just put out a release saying the playwright Terrence McNally, halfway to an EGOT, is this year’s CC Class Day Speaker.
McNally, CC ’60 ,was a writer on the 66th Varsity Show, “A Little Bit Different,” which was about “a film company shooting on location in Africa” filled with American public figures who are eventually eaten by cannibals. [A good year for the V-Show—the music was written by Ed Kleban, who wrote lyrics for A Chorus Line.] McNally was Phi Beta Kappa and worked for Columbia College Today.
He’s won Tonys for Love! Valour! Compassion! , Master Class, and for his books for Ragtime and Kiss of the Spiderwoman. McNally was the librettist for the Dead Man Walking opera and the Catch Me If You Can musical. His newest play, And Away We Go, will be premiering this fall.
Image via Columbia College
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20 Comments
@Anonymau5 Ugh.
@SEAS '14 “McNally, CC ’60 ,was a writer on the 66th Varsity Show, “A Little Bit Different,” which was about “a film company shooting on location in Africa” filled with American public figures who are eventually eaten by cannibals.”
good lord, i wonder if the rest of the musical was as incredibly racist as this sentence. anyone know?
@Anonymous if we’re lucky.
@Eh I was thinking it wasn’t too far off of Book of Mormon.
Comedy isn’t always supposed to be racially/culturally sensitive.
Also, it was the 50s, that sounds tame.
@a Eh, I’m not so excited – can’t say who would thrill me, but a writer seems rather too cloistered for my tastes.
@Twitch I’m betting this is gonna be a good speech. I’m excited.
@good luck kid Could be wrong, but I thought the rule was that they had to be a graduate of the college? IE NDT (per Wikipedia) was Harvard and Bigelow (also from Wikipedia) was SF College of Arts.
@good luck kid Ah sorry, failed recaptcha… This is meant to be in response to “I mean,”
@CC '13 Came here expecting to see the negativity pouring in as usual and was pleasantly surprised. Class of 2013, you are awesome. Crazy lefties, bro-y bankers and everyone in between, I love you guys and I’m super excited to graduate with you in 33 days.
@CC 13 I guess it’s just easier to be happy with what you’ve got.
@CC 13 Yep! My first reaction was “who?” but I don’t have the energy to feel any strong emotions – good or bad.
@CC13 I for one am legitimately excited.
@Anonymous Obama
@good luck kid Yeah, we should probably do something about that whole alumni speaker rule…
@I mean, I like that the speaker has a connection to Columbia. It’s possible to get good speakers like Kathryn Bigelow or Neil DeGrasse Tyson (they were on the short list) but instead we end up with meh ones. I don’t think that rule is a issue, just the selection process
@cc '11.5 Better than John “What’s the Internet?” MacArthur.
@cc14 no, would have loved to have him.
@CC '11 Dude, John MacArthur’s speech was amazing. Did you actually listen to/read it? http://harpers.org/blog/2012/05/columbia-college-class-day-keynote-speech/
@CC'14 Who?
@CC'13 You seriously felt the need to write that, CC’14?