“OKLAHOMA!” musical

Today’s session of the Gabfest speaking club (at Window on America center Dnipropetrovsk, Ukraine) was dedicated to the introduction of the “OKLAHOMA!” musical to the Gabfest Club members. This year this world famous Broadway play celebrates its 70th anniversary.
The Club members read and translated the Wikipedia article about the musical. The original Broadway production opened on March 31, 1943. It was a box-office smash and ran for an unprecedented 2,243 performances. Later it enjoyed several award-winning revivals, national tours, foreign productions and an Academy Award-winning 1955 film adaptation.
 “Oklahoma!” was the first fully integrated musical play, using every song and dance to develop the characters or the plot.

We have watched several You Tube videos:
-    about the celebration of the anniversary in the USA and Australia
-    with the most popular songs from the 1955 movie .
The listening of the songs left the majority of the group unaware of the songs’ content. The lyrics of 3 songs were offered for translation. This activity allowed the language learners to improve their auditing and translation skills.
The other topics on the agenda of the Club were:
-     selecting of topics on American-Ukrainian culture exchange, of candidates among the American industry experts and professionals to arrange Skype conversations with (through the US Embassy in Kyiv)
-    preparation for the USA Independence Day  celebration.
The session was educational to all the participants as they were not aware about this cult American musical “Oklahoma!” before.
The number of participants – 17 persons.
Have a look at more pictures, please