Concordia makes a show of its anniversary: The college will mark 25 years with a big production -- 'Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat.'

Byline: MARLO JO FISHER
(OC Register - April 20, 2001)

IRVINE Andrea Galante isn't much of a seamstress. She'll tell you that flat out. But that hasn't stopped her from working as a costume designer all spring, while trying to finish up her degree before going on to law school.

Robin Parks works in the admissions office. Her job never requires her to sing and dance. Yet she's been warbling and tapping away six days a week, getting ready for the big show.

Michael Shackelford is a kindergarten teacher who's also working on his doctorate in education. Yet he's carved out time all year to direct the largest production ever staged at Concordia University.

Unlike most schools, which might have a ceremony to celebrate a 25th anniversary, this small, Lutheran, liberal-arts college is staging the splashiest musical production in its history. The play is reuniting 77 alumni, students, faculty and staff for a singing, dancing, outdoor, rock 'n' roll version of "Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat."

"We've never had a musical of this caliber, a set or cast of this size, ever," said Renee Wacker, a college administrator who will be making her theatrical dancing debut tonight. "We've been working on this for over a year."

Concordia has grown from its 1976 beginning as a Lutheran seminary to today's 1,500-student liberal-arts university, which still has a mission to provide pastors and teachers for Lutheran schools, churches and missions.

Its immaculate campus with clean, cheerful-looking, fresh-faced students is sequestered behind gates in the Irvine community of Turtle Rock.

Shackelford, an alumni who has directed other productions for the school and also teaches theater part time, said he was approached a year ago to find a play that would be appropriate to celebrate the school's silver anniversary.

Wacker, who also participated in the choice of the play, said officials were looking for a name production that would attract an audience.

The musical, written by Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber, tells the biblical story of Joseph, a young man who was the favorite among his father's 12 sons. After his father gives Joseph a spectacular many-colored coat, the envious brothers kidnap and sell him into slavery. Joseph's eventual triumph over adversity and reconciliation with his family is celebrated in the musical, which was first penned in the 1970s and later became a hit on Broadway and the London stage.

Concordia's production will feature an updated rock 'n' roll score by another alumni, musician Rob Blaney.

Because the production is so large, it is being mounted in an outdoor amphitheater that seats 600. Volunteers have spent six weeks building the elaborate two-story set, including a plywood camel.

The college found sponsors willing to fund the $20,000 needed to mount the production -- the cost of the theater department's entire annual production budget -- but could only afford four shows, twice this weekend and twice next.

Shackelford and the entire crew are hoping this weekend's forecasted drizzle won't materialize on the heads of hundreds of alumni and supporters expected to turn out for the celebration.

``We're hoping this anniversary show won't be the first one in the school's history to be rained out,'' Shackelford said.


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