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Changing Times is a fifteen minute musical, written as part of the York Theatre's 4@15 Workshop, in collaboration with the NYU Steinhardt Department of Vocal Performance.  One of four fifteen minute musicals written in one week around the students and presented together at the York, Changing Times submits for your consideration the notion of self-censorship. 

A young visual artist named Reese, secretly struggling from color blindness arrives at an artist colony in hopes of finally escaping the trappings of the outside world which have for so long left him uninspired and mentally blocked.  What he finds at Standhaven however, is far different from what he was expecting.  

Instead of a community of artists which support and nurture, Reese finds a group of self-involved, self-serving artists only interested in one thing: news from the outside world.  In this cloistered community, where newspapers come but once a month, the current dish is so valuable, it's currency. 

As his fellow colonists struggle to come to terms with global unrest in the third world where people are killed daily for speaking their minds, Reese discovers that there are other things besides banana republics which can censor a person.

Below is a clip of a rehearsal of the opening number, "When You Get There", featuring Nic Rouleau, Kristen da Costa, Chris Ketner, Michael Montalbano, Cindy Lanzas, Nicole Pagnotta, Gillian Greenbaum and Sarah Folsom.  With Tammy Holder at the piano and direction by Brian Blythe.