Illini Student Musicals
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"Illini Student Musicals (ISM) is an organization dedicated to the performance of musical theater at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Students will be able to gain experience in the administrative, technical, creative, and performance aspects of producing musical theater. By putting on a show once a semester, students will be able to get first-hand experience in the collaborative process and in all elements of musical theater.
ISM strives to put on performances that showcase our members’ talent, enthusiasm, creativity, and passion. With each show, we aim to challenge ourselves as artists as well as our audiences with performances of the highest artistic and professional caliber."
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Illini Student Musicals opens doors to opportunity. Whether you've recently graduated from high school and miss the thrill of being on stage or if you're a costume designer craving to craft 25 intricate costumes (hard to believe, but true), ISM offers students a chance to hone their craft without requiring prior professional experience or the need to pay for participation. Personally, I find myself returning to ISM time and again for the invaluable connections I make with fellow students who share similar passions. It also grants me the unique role of a young, independent technical director, where I can learn from my mistakes while making autonomous decisions, setting my creative journey apart from the confines of a typical job or school assignment. During my time with the organization, I've built and scenic designed five productions with this group, while also handling technical design and technical direction for three of them.
We typically spend time building at night and on weekends resulting in our scenery taking about six weeks to fabricate and paint while maintaining a budget range of $600 to $1,200. We execute load-in within a mere 1.5 days where all of our scenic work takes shape offsite at a rented warehouse, and we transport the finished sets via box truck to our campus theater.