MoMA Will Celebrate Songwriters Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman

On February 12th, The Museum of Modern Art will celebrate the early work of Tony Award-winning Hairspray and Smash songwriters Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman as part of its Club 57: Film, Performance, and Art in the East Village, 1978-1983 exhibition.

Columnist Michael Musto will join the writers for the 7PM conversation and mini-concert that will follow the birth of Shaiman and Wittman's careers as part of the New York City's Lower East Side club scene in the 1980s with an evening of video, conversation, and vocal performance. The evening will revisit a time when the two men found themselves "too rock and roll for theater, and too theater for rock and roll", according to MoMA.

However, they didn't stay "too rock and roll for theater" for long; Shaiman and Wittman won the Tony Award for Best Original Score for Hairspray in 2003. Their Broadway musical resume includes Catch Me If You Can and the recent Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. They are also known for bringing Broadway to television with their NBC musical series Smash, which they also co-produced, that showcased the fictional behind-the-scenes of a Broadway-aimed Marilyn Monroe musical Bombshell.

According to MoMA, this exhibition is the first "to fully examine the scene-changing, interdisciplinary life of this seminal downtown New York alternative space. The exhibition will tap into the legacy of Club 57's founding curatorial staff to examine how the convergence of film, video, performance, art, and curatorship in the club environment of New York in the 1970s and 1980s became a model for a new spirit of interdisciplinary endeavor. Responding to the broad range of programming at Club 57, the exhibition will present their accomplishments across a range of disciplines-from film, video, performance, and theater to photography, painting, drawing, printmaking, collage, zines, fashion design, and curating." Tickets go on sale February 5th.

For more information, click here.

Photo Credit: Linda Lenzi