(MONTCLAIR, NJ) -- PEAK Performances at Montclair State University, which develops, produces, and presents world-class professional live performances that connect communities across Montclair and surrounding areas, has announced its 2024-25 season, bringing a diversity of genres and forms to the Alexander Kasser Theater.
Wiley Hausam, Director of Arts + Cultural Programming at Montclair State University, says, “PEAK’s new season features a number of artists—and characters in narrative works—who are compelled to move fearlessly to the edge and risk failure, or even death. This is obviously true of Philippe Petit and of Annie Edson Taylor in Queen of the Mist. But it’s also true, in a more subtle way, of the protagonists in Frankenstein, Encanto, and Kill the Whale. My hope is that audiences will be inspired by their bravery.”
The 2024-2025 season begins with the return of “one of the most consistently excellent troupes working today” (The New York Times)—A.I.M by Kyle Abraham—to PEAK Performances. On September 12, 2024, the company opens the season with the North American premiere of Cassette Vol. 1, choreographed by Kyle Abraham. This new work, Abraham has described, reflects “a different side of [his] influences…a very particular part of what it was like dancing on the back of the yellow and black school buses of [his] elementary and middle school years to music that’s equal parts M/A/R/R/S, Suzanne Vega, Salt-N-Pepa, The B-52’s, LL Cool J, and Prince.”
Last season, PEAK Performances produced the East Coast premiere of Blind Injustice, composed by Scott Davenport Richards with a libretto by David Cote, and directed by Robin Guarino. The opera offered “a spirited call for reforms to the American criminal justice system” (The New York Times). The organization continues its commitment to daring and original music theater works in a season featuring five-time Tony Award nominee Michael John LaChiusa’s exhilarating musical Queen of the Mist as its centerpiece. With orchestrations by Michael Starobin, and directed by Kirsten Sanderson, the musical-in-concert stars three-time Tony Award nominee and Drama Desk Award winner Mary Testa reprising the role of Annie Edson Taylor, who at the turn of the 20th century became the first woman to ride over Niagara Falls, in a barrel of her own creation. Queen of the Mist is “a refreshingly unusual musical, with a compellingly layered lead character in Taylor” (Time Out London).
In an era of unprecedented difficulty for the development and production of bold new musical theater works, PEAK Performances announces a developmental workshop of a new musical, Daniel Henri Emond’s rock opera, Kill the Whale, a radical reimagining of Herman Melville’s Moby Dick. The musical will be workshopped in a closed setting at the Alexander Kasser Theater in July 2024. Emond won the 2024 Jonathan Larson Award for Kill the Whale.
Manual Cinema, the Chicago-based performance collective that “has virtually created a genre of its own” (Exeunt) and “conjur[es] phantasms to die for” (The New York Times), brings its acclaimed fresh perspective on Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein to PEAK Performances, May 3, 2025. This visionary work “fuses Shelley’s novel with Shelley’s biography, emphasizing recurring themes of desire, birth and loss” (The New York Times), and continues PEAK Performances’ presentation of multimedia works operating at a boundary-breaking nexus of forms.
Concerts this season from both established and emerging voices provide breathtaking experiences of music as a powerful device for storytelling. On September 29, 2024, up-and-coming singer/songwriter Rachel Rose makes her PEAK Performances debut, bringing her soul, blues, folk, and pop-uniting musicianship to the Alexander Kasser stage. Tony Award winner Laura Benanti also makes her PEAK Performances debut this season with a concert on Saturday, November 16. On October 12, 2024, PEAK Performances audiences of all ages can experience the beloved Disney animated feature Encanto with a live orchestra, under the stars in Montclair State University’s amphitheater.
From the moving experience of hearing Encanto’s score performed live to the rush of revisiting Philippe Petit’s legendary 1974 tightrope walk between the Twin Towers in James Marsh’s Academy Award-winning documentary Man on Wire (September 26, 2024), PEAK Performance’s cinematic offerings this season engage and transport. The screening of Man on Wire concludes with an audience Q & A with Petit himself.
Programming Schedule and Details
A.I.M by Kyle Abraham
Cassette Vol. 1
Dance - Choreographed by Kyle Abraham
Thursday, September 12, 2024 at 7:30pm; Alexander Kasser Theater
North American Premiere
Returning to PEAK with the North American premiere of A.I.M by Kyle Abraham’s Cassette Vol. 1, A.I.M will kick off PEAK’s 24–25 season. Cassette Vol. 1 is equal parts camp and critique. At its core, it aims to make space for the ridiculous and the referential.
With the birth of music video culture in the early 1980s, an awakening of fantasy, street culture, and a popular hybridization of form seemed like the way of the future. Danced to music that’s equal parts M/A/R/R/S, Suzanne Vega, Salt-N-Pepa, the B-52’s, LL Cool J, and Prince, Cassette Vol. 1 recently premiered at the International Summer Festival in Kampnagel, Germany.
Abraham’s approach to artmaking is more than dance — it's an avenue for genuine storytelling and cultural articulation.
Rachel Rose Music | Singer-Songwriter
Thursday, September 19, 2024 at 7:30pm; Alexander Kasser Theater
PEAK Performances Debut
Rachel Rose, a Connecticut-born, Austin-launched, and Brooklyn-based folk singer-songwriter, has crafted a rich, nostalgic sound that incorporates elements of soul, blues, folk, and pop. Rachel draws influence from the likes of Joni Mitchell, Joan Baez, Linda Ronstadt, and Alanis Morissette.
Rose is a rising star who has proven herself as a powerful vocalist—an indispensable addition to the playlists of those who appreciate JoJo, Daniel Caesar, duendita, or contemporary soul and R&B artists.
Rose was chosen to appear on The Tonight Show’s “Battle of the Instant Songwriters” with Jimmy Fallon, and her original song, “Back to the Beginning,” was featured on Tiny Desk’s Top Shelf Segment (she made the top 36 out of 6,000 submissions). She was a featured artist at SXSW in 2024.
Man on Wire Film | Followed by Q&A with Philippe Petit
Thursday, September 26, 2024 at 7:00pm; Presentation Hall, School of Communication and Media
In celebration of the 50th Anniversary of Philippe Petit’s death-defying high-wire walk between the twin towers of New York City’s World Trade Center in 1974, PEAK Performances presents Man On Wire, the award-winning documentary about his illegal crossing, what some consider “the artistic crime of the century.” Based on Petit’s 2002 book, To Reach the Clouds, this 2008 film won the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival. It also won the Academy Award® for Best Documentary Feature. Directed by James Marsh.
Following the screening Petit will engage in a Q & A with the audience. Now 74, he is also an author, artist, close-up magician, lock-picker, keynote speaker, 18th-century method timber framer, chess player, aficionado of French wine, and linguist—and was once seen bullfighting in Peru. He has been arrested over 500 times on 5 continents for street juggling. He has been an Artist-in-Residence at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York City for more than 40 years, and it is there that he will stage a grand celebration (with him on the wire) of the 50th Anniversary of his WTC coup on August 7 and 8.
Encanto: The Sing-Along Film Concert
Under the Stars, Live-to-Film Concert with Live Orchestra
Saturday, October 12, 2024 at 7:30pm; Amphitheater
Those who attended Disney’s Coco in the amphitheater last October know what a special experience it is to watch under the stars with live music. Disney’s beloved animated feature Encanto comes to life in an interactive performance and screening that’s perfect for the whole family. Encanto lovers of all ages can sing along with their favorite Grammy Award–winning songs. The film, presented in full under the stars at Montclair State University’s Amphitheater, features on-screen lyrics and musical numbers performed by a live band.
Encanto tells the tale of an extraordinary family, the Madrigals, who live in a charmed town in the mountains of Colombia. The Madrigal children all have magical powers, except Mirabel—who discovers her talents as she sets out to save her village from danger. The Academy Award– and Grammy–winning soundtrack features eight original songs by Tony– and Grammy Award–winning composer Lin-Manuel Miranda, with an original score by Grammy winner Germaine Franco.
Audiences are encouraged to come early, buy dinner and dessert at on-site food trucks, get their faces painted, and dress up as their favorite characters.
Laura Benanti
Saturday, November 16, 2024 at 8:00pm; Alexander Kasser Theater
PEAK Performances Debut
Tony Award winner and five-time Tony Award nominee Laura Benanti is a highly celebrated stage and screen actress. She is a star of Broadway musicals and as First Lady Melania Trump on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. Benanti co-starred in the hit film No Hard Feelings with Jennifer Lawrence and Matthew Broderick and guest stars in Max’s The Gilded Age, Hulu’s Life & Beth (created by and starring Amy Schumer), and Elsbeth on CBS. Benanti earned rave reviews for her portrayal of a grieving widow in Netflix’s film Worth, starring opposite Michael Keaton, Stanley Tucci, and Amy Ryan. She will be seen later this year in the film Goodrich, opposite Michael Keaton, and Everything’s Going to Be Great with Bryan Cranston and Allison Janney. Benanti’s iconic impression of Melania Trump on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert is widely praised. Other TV work includes Younger, Ziwe, Gossip Girl, Supergirl, Nashville and Inside Amy Schumer (among many others.)
In the theater, Benanti took Broadway by storm at the age of 18 as Maria in The Sound of Music and has subsequently starred in ten more Broadway shows (musicals, straight plays, comedies, and dramas) including Into the Woods, Nine (opposite Antonio Banderas), Gypsy (for which she won a Tony Award®), She Loves Me, My Fair Lady, and Steve Martin’s Meteor Shower opposite Amy Schumer and Keegan-Michael Key. This year, she debuted her highly celebrated solo comedy show Laura Benanti: Nobody Cares, which she created, wrote, and starred in. This New York Times Critic’s Pick is available for streaming on Audible.
Queen of the Mist Musical-in-Concert
Words and Music by Michael John LaChiusa; Orchestrations by Michael Starobin; Directed by Kirsten Sanderson
Thursday, February 20, 2025 at 7:30pm; Friday, February 21, 2025 at 7:30pm; Saturday, February 22, 2025 at 8:00pm; and Sunday, February 23, 2025 at 3:00pm; Alexander Kasser Theater
Queen of the Mist is a wise, moving, and singular musical with words and music by the 5-time Tony nominee Michael John LaChiusa, one of the great musical theater composers/lyricists of his generation (Hello, Again, Marie-Christine, The Wild Party, and recently, The Gardens of Anuncia, among others).
This riveting narrative is based on the extraordinary, audacious, and eerily captivating true story of Annie Edson Taylor, who will be portrayed by three-time Tony nominee and Drama Desk Award winner Mary Testa. In 1901, Taylor dared to be the first woman to challenge—and survive—the mighty Niagara Falls, braving them in a barrel she designed and built. Taylor had to navigate not only the perilous Falls but also her place in history amid a chaotic world of manipulative managers, killers, judgmental relatives, and advocates. Obsessed by her belief in her own greatness and unwilling to settle for an ordinary life, she waged war against her fears and gambled with destiny. Don't miss this captivating tale that pushes the boundaries of courage and ambition.
Queen of the Mist was commissioned and premiered by The Transport Group, New York City, in 2011.
Presented by arrangement with Concord Theatricals.
Manual Cinema - Frankenstein Multi-Media Puppetry, Live Music, Film, Theater
Saturday, May 3, 2025 at 8:00pm; Alexander Kasser Theater
Love, loss, and creation merge in unexpected ways as Manual Cinema presents its thrilling version of the classic Gothic tale Frankenstein. This Chicago-based performance collective masterfully merges shadow puppetry, cinematic techniques, sound effects, and live music to deliver a hauntingly unique experience. The ingenious blend of Mary Shelley's biography and her iconic creation, Frankenstein, offers a fresh perspective on the beauty and horror of creation.
By intertwining the real-life and fictional narratives of Shelley, Victor Frankenstein, and Frankenstein’s Monster, Manual Cinema intricately showcases how family, community, and education can shape personhood—or destroy it by their absence.
Court Theatre presented the World Premiere of Frankenstein in Chicago, November 2018. Frankenstein had its New York premiere at the Public Theater’s Under the Radar Festival in January 2019 and its international debut in Scotland at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in August 2019.
Recommended for ages 12 and up.
This production includes loud sounds, flashing lights and haze.
Funding Credits
The PEAK Performances engagement of Manual Cinema’s Frankenstein is made possible in part through the ArtsCONNECT program of Mid Atlantic Arts, with support from the National Endowment for the Arts.
PEAK Performances, which is based at Montclair State University in Montclair, NJ, commissions, develops, produces and presents live professional music, dance, theater, musical theater and opera by world-class artists. Its 2023-24 season is the first under the direction of Wiley Hausam.
