This critically-acclaimed, imaginative new production of SUNDAY IN THE PARK WITH GEORGE is infused with contemporary ballet by personifying the colors on George’s palette as dancers on pointe, exploding George’s creative passion across the stage.

The production ran March 8th-24th at The Axelrod Performing Arts Center in Deal, NJ.

Footage from the production can be viewed above.

SUNDAY IN THE PARK WITH GEORGE is a Pulitzer Prize-winning musical with music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim and a book by James Lapine. The first act centers around a fictionalized George Seurat, the mastermind behind pointillism, as he creates his iconic masterpiece "A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte." Act two follows his great-grandson, also named George, who struggles to reconnect with his artistic purpose. The musical explores themes of art and sacrifice, and the connections we lose and gain as we try to capture the ephemeral beauty of the world around us.

This re-imagined production, which ran at the Axelrod Performing Arts Center March 8-24th, brings George Suerat's inner world of color and light to the surface with contemporary ballet dancers on pointe representing the colors on George's palette, and cutting-edge lighting design reminiscent of an arena concert. The production, directed and choreographed by Eamon Foley (13! The Musical, Everyday Rapture) and starring Graham Phillips (The Good Wife, Riverdale) and Talia Suskauer (Elphaba in Wicked) as George and Dot, uses dance and light to help us into George's mind and process, kinesthetically communicating his passion for creating art so that we can feel what he feels while in process and better empathize with his difficult choices.

The set, composed only of an iconic wall of moving lighting instruments and four rolling ladders, placed the entire show squarely within the visual language of the Chromolume, connecting the worlds of Act 1 and Act 2. The environment is almost entirely made of beams of choreographed light, allowing us to see the world how George in Act 1 sees it. However, in Act 2, that wall of light becomes the light sculpture George’s great-grandson is presenting at the museum where the painting hangs one hundred years later.

These strokes, along with our approach to the text, was all aimed towards illuminating the love and passion within this beautiful piece of theater. We strived to make these characters more tangible than ever, to help the audience feel their inner worlds on a visceral level, and bring Sondheim's score to life visually in a way that hasn’t been done before. 

FINISHING THE HAT

“Finishing the Hat” is our proof-of-concept video for the production, directed, choreographed, and shot by Eamon Foley, and starring Graham Phillips as George.

Production Photos & Reviews

Production Photos by Michael Hull

Theatermania

“A fresh ‘Sunday in the Park With George’ brims with color and light. … Director Eamon Foley offers a fresh and captivating new vision of this work. …  The production succeeds because it embraces a wholly singular aesthetic. Foley’s ‘Sunday’ looks like no other staging I’ve ever seen. …The true triumph, though, is Paul Miller’s brilliant lighting, which continually invites the audience, as Seurat once did, to reconsider how it views what seems so obvious in front of them. If this production were mounted on Broadway, the second act unveiling of George’s Chromolume alone would guarantee a Tony nom. … When Dot appears before the contemporary George in the musical’s final moment, she provides him with a piece of valuable advice: “Give us more to see.” By taking a modern classic and revitalizing it in ways that feel entirely fresh and original, Foley and his talented stable of designers and performers have done exactly that.”

– Cameron Kelsall, TheaterMania

BroadwayWorld

“A vibrant, beautifully staged production that enjoys splendid direction and choreography by Broadway veteran,  Eamon Foley. The bold reimagining of the show with its star-studded cast is enthralling from the first minute to the last.  … Gather your friends and make time to see the show.  It is an exquisite theatrical experience.”

– Marina Kennedy, BroadwayWorld

Two River Times

“Spellbinding. …Graham and Talia Suskauer do stellar work as Seurat and Dot. … In this ambitious staging, Phillips and Suskauer serve as vital emotional through lines. There’s love, hope, pain, loss and all of the beautifully messy humanity between them serving as a counterpoint to director/choreographer Eamon Foley and Sondheim’s theatrical precision on full display. …With the orchestra flanking the audience and the light show cascading over viewers’ heads, it’s often hard to tell if we in attendance are viewing the art, or if we’ve been invited to become part of it. …It is a piece of art one believes Seurat and Sondheim would be proud of.”

– Alex Biese, Two River Times 

OUT IN JERSEY

“Sunday in the Park with George is back in a winning, re-thought version. … A delightful re-imagining of the original show, in which both the characters on stage and the members of the audience are partners in creation. … The cast is superb. Graham Phillips and Talia  Suskauer are incredible. … This creative redesign of the original is worth seeing, no matter how familiar one might be with the story.  The director and designers have created a substantially different, emotionally satisfying version of this classic musical that makes the trip to the Axelrod Performing Arts Center in Deal one worth taking.  I strongly encourage you to see Sunday in the Park with George before its all-too-brief run ends.”

-Allen Neuner, Out In Jersey

Masterworks Broadway - Peter Filichia

“A bright ‘Sunday in The Park With George.’ …  The show soared …“A blank page or canvas” aren’t the only things that offer “so many possibilities,” as ‘Sunday in The Park With George’ tells us. So does a bare stage. Eamon Foley certainly knew how to use it in his recent production of Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine’s 1985 Pulitzer Prize-winner. He made the 40-year-old musical about a Neo-Impressionist make quite a new impression.”

– Peter Filichia, Broadway Radio

The jewish Voice and Opinion

“By reviving Sunday in the Park with George, Mr. Foley has tapped into the essence of the creative process, bringing Seurat’s painting to life and giving the classic a new essence. …Although Sunday in the Park with George will be at the Axelrod PAC only until March 24th, there is little doubt this show about life, love, and the creation of art is Broadway-bound.”

- Two Sues On The Aisle, The Jewish Voice & Opinion

The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts

“An innovative new staging … offers a vision that is new, and is, in fact, full of life.”

- Douglas Reside, Curator, Theatre Collection, The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts

GRAHAM PHILLIPS at George and TALIA SUSKAUER as Dot

Move On

Contemporary ballet dancers on pointe illuminate the sensual thrill of creating art in a way that even non-artists can connect to. The goal is for even those who don’t have experience making art to be able to connect to George’s passion, which is heightened by the choreography, and understand why George is pulled between his work and Dot. Because his colors are personified as six beautiful ballerinas on pointe, there is an intrinsic competition at play between the dancers and Dot, and we can feel how the work draws him away from her.

In songs such as “Color and Light,” “Finishing the Hat,” and “Beautiful,” when George is deep in his process, dance contributes to the storytelling. Not only does the usage of contemporary ballet illuminate the colors of Sondheim’s music in a fresh way, but they help the audience how George feels when he’s in the throws of creation. George isn't detaching, but thriving within a whole other realm of beauty that only he can see. We use the kinesthetic quality of dance to help the audience feel what George feels when he paints, and perhaps even think, “I, too, would make that choice.”

Grind Arts Co explored this concept in our first short film “Color & Light” in 2016. We were honored to share this piece with Stephen Sondheim before his passing. You can watch a segment of the short film below.

Eamon Foley, Paul Miller (lighting design) and Ryan Howell (set design) have come up with a slick design using only three strokes: A black portal that irises the production into the aspect ratio of the painting, a sliding white piece of fabric that takes projection and shadow play, and a wall of light at the back of the stage.

The wall of light, in act one, is an abstract expression of George’s imagination, allowing for cutting-edge, rock-and-roll style lighting design that will be highly choreographed to Sondheim’s music. It mirrors the painting in the sense that it can be an iridescent backdrop of colors suggesting the park, but can also take on a more abstract, sensory, choreographed quality when the dancers are onstage, as those are the moments when we dive deeper into George’s creative process. Those moments include “Color and Light,” “Finishing the Hat,” and “Beautiful.”

In act two, the light wall becomes “The Chromolume,” a light sculpture art installation that George’s great-grandson is presenting at the Chicago Institute of Art. We expose the bones of the structure, and what was once a metaphor for the inside of an artist’s mind becomes a diegetic art sculpture. It looms over the stage as a burden over George, as it is his seventh Chromolume, and he can’t seem to move onto something new.

Our locations, namely the park and George’s art studio, will be constructed using only the architecture of the dancers, four rolling ladders, and beams of light. The stage utilize negative space to let dance and light beams communicate the emotional and thematic subtext of the story.