University of the Arts

This came out September 18th.

Josh Lawrence has a bachelor's degree from the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, a master's degree from the Juilliard School in New York, and studied with pianist Barry Harris.

This is his eighth Positone release.

He also has two albums with Rope-a-Dope Records co-leading the Fresh Cut Orchestra.

And so the context that I was digging into, I was like, did the council ever do something like this before where they tried to have a hearing about politics? the closure of an institution, and they did back in 2024.

Remember, that's when the University of the Arts abruptly closed, leaving students, faculty, and staff in the dark.

But in this case, with the Academy of Natural Sciences, Councilmember Nina Ahmed and Councilmember Jeffrey Young Jr. are calling for an audit and accountability.

They're asking for transparency and clear answers from Drexel about what really happened.

Okay.

University of the Arts, right? I get a little Louis Armstrong jazz award from my mom a little.

I get my little partial scholarship, I go to school, and I'm hot.

I'm in all these bands, I'm like playing acid jazz, I'm playing a big band, I'm playing an Afro-Cuban band, and I'm a freshman.

And I've been practicing it for a couple of years.

And now finally, I've had the chance to get to work with TBD, who I studied with at UArts as well.

Well, we were in the same major, directing playwriting and production major at the late UArts.

And now we've both, you know, we've all kind of come back together.

And we've been working on this project for like over a year now.

So we're going to talk about this.

They said that, yeah, CalArts is on track to be shuttered like the UArts in Philadelphia in 2024, which I didn't know about that either.

I didn't

either, but I'm not surprised.

Amazing genius, absolute genius.

But the idea of that kind of clown, and I've taken quite a bit in the last several years, If you ever hear about a place called Pig Iron, Pig Iron Theater on North 2nd Street, you know, when the University of the Arts went under, they basically had to shut down for a period.

Now they're part of Rowan, and they're lucky.

It's, you know, obviously growing and moving forward.

that brought in audiences to watch plays staged in abandoned industrial sites, into old prisons, under bridges, beside hotel swimming pools, even around the dinner tables of small private houses.

As well as his many years at Bryn Mawr and Haverford, Lorde has also worked as a director or dramaturg at many leading American non-profit regional theaters, including the Actors Theater of Louisville and the Philadelphia Wilma Theater, and has taught at the Yale School of Drama at the Curtis Institute and the University of the Arts.

Since 1992, he led a succession of small independent producing organizations, including Potlatch and Big House Plays and Spectacles, a small professional theater company he founded with his friend and colleague, the designer Hiroshi Iwasaki.

Other local companies he was involved with include Headlong Dance Theater and the Arden Theater.