The Princeton Playhouse Ensembles in concert in 2025. Photo credit: Jason Haberman Photography

(PRINCETON, NJ) -- The Lewis Center for the Arts' Program in Theater and Music Theater will present How to Be Not Alone, a concert of original and Broadway songs performed by the Princeton Playhouse Ensembles led by Solon Snider Sway and featuring guest tap dance artist Michael J. Love. Directed by faculty member Aaron Landsman and cosponsored by the Department of Music, the concert is on Saturday, February 21, 2026 at the Berlind Theatre. Showtime is 7:00pm.

The Princeton Playhouse Choir and Princeton Playhouse Orchestra comprise the Playhouse Ensembles, both led by Snider Sway. The choir is housed jointly within the Lewis Center's Program in Theater and Music Theater and the Department of Music, focusing on repertoire beginning in a broad range of theatrical traditions and expanding into a realm of experimental and innovative music-making. The core of the group's repertoire is music connected to theater and reimagined for creative ensemble configurations through new arrangements and interdisciplinary collaborations.

The choir incorporates large and small ensemble singing, a cappella and accompanied singing, vocal solos, dance, spoken word, new music commissions, and collaborative projects with artists across departments to facilitate a vibrant and inclusive rehearsal environment. The orchestra is an instrumental chamber ensemble specializing in the performance of new music commissions, music theater repertoire, popular song, and film music. Open to all Princeton students, the ensembles hold annual auditions and include students with a broad range of musical backgrounds and interests.

The concert will unite music theater storytelling, performance, composition, arranging, direction, and choreography while featuring the work, perspectives, reflections, and leadership of current Princeton students and alumni.  Audiences will hear selections from A Little Night Music, Godspell, Evening Primrose, Kimberly Akimbo, In the Heights, Maybe Happy Ending, Next to Normal, Rent, and Waitress alongside new works by student composers and arrangers.

Tickets are $20 ($10 for students) and available for purchase online. The Berlind Theatre  is locatd at 91 University Place on the Princeton campus. It is an accessible venue with wheelchair and companion seating and an assistive listening system with headphones available. The performance will be open captioned. Guests in need of other access accommodations are invited to contact the Lewis Center at [email protected] at least one week prior to the event date.

The Playhouse Ensembles will be joined by special guest, Michael J. Love, a 2021-23 Princeton Arts Fellow and interdisciplinary tap dance artist—a choreographer, scholar, and educator, whose embodied research intermixes Black queer feminist theory and aesthetics with a rigorous practice that critically engages the Black cultural past as it imagines Black futurity. Other guests include Playhouse alumni Aaron Ventresca '24 and Halle Mitchell '23. Along with Snider Sway, student music directors and conductors include Matt Cline '27 and Marvel Jem Roth '28, with student choreography by Ava Kronman '26, Destine Harrison-Williams '26, Kevin Edouard '27, and Rika Nishikawa '29.

The concert also marks the Playhouse Ensembles' debut EP release, From Wind to Wonder, supported by a grant from the Edward T. Cone '39 *42 Fund in Princeton's Humanities Council. The EP features five musical compositions written or co-written by current and former students. CDs will be available for purchase in the lobby after the show.

Snider Sway is a composer/lyricist/librettist, music director, conductor, singer, actor, accompanist, arranger, and educator. He is a full-time faculty member in the Department of Music and Program in Theater at Princeton, where he directs the Playhouse Ensembles and Trenton Youth Singers and teaches courses such as "Creative Musical Leadership" and "The Musical: Past, Present, and Future." A music director and conductor for Broadway, Off-Broadway, and regional events and shows, he has worked with artists ranging from Brian Stokes Mitchell to Billy Joel and collaborated with groups such as the Story Pirates comedy group and the Young People's Chorus of NYC. A composer for musicals, films, choirs, video games, and chamber ensembles, he currently serves on the board of directors for The Walden School, a music education program focused on innovative and inclusive music composition pedagogy and on modeling community building through music. He studied music and theater at Yale University, where he served as music director for the Doox of Yale and Yale Whiffenpoofs. As a conductor and ensemble director, Sway notes that he aims to facilitate creative and welcoming communities full of experimentation, growth, wonder, and imagination.

In addition to director Landsman, who is also producing, the production team includes alumna Alex Slisher '25 as lighting designer with staff members Kay Richardson as sound engineer and Milan Eldridge as stage manager.

Visit the Lewis Center website to learn more about the Princeton Playhouse Ensembles and the more than 100 public performances, exhibitions, readings, screenings, concerts, lectures, and special events, most of them free, presented each year by the Lewis Center for the Arts.