Julie (Anderson) Nordeen
Prior to graduating in 1981, Julie Nordeen attended Concordia College and was very active within the theater department. During the 1980s, performing arts were becoming controversial, especially by most communist governments. Many people associate performance art with highly publicized controversies over government funding of the arts, censorship, and standards of public decency. (1) Indeed, at its worst, performance art can seem gratuitous, boring, or just plain weird. But, at its best, it taps into our most basic shared instincts such as our physical and psychological needs for food, shelter, and human interaction or our individual fears and self-consciousness or even our concerns about life, the future, and the world we live in. It often makes us think about issues in a way that can be disturbing and uncomfortable, but it can also make us laugh by calling attention to the absurdities in life and the uniqueness of human behavior. On the bright side, theater and performing arts were becoming progressively more popular. The 1980s saw the influence of European mega-musicals and pop operas, on Broadway, in the West End of London, and several places around the United States. These types of performances usually contained larger crowds, bigger sets, noticeable accessories, and big budgets for props and necessities. (2) Many performances were based on novels or other works of literature. The most important writers of mega-musicals included the French team of Claude-Michel Schonberg and Alain Boublil, who wrote Les Misérables, which became the longest running international musical hit in history. The team, continued to produce hits within the 1980s, including Miss Saigon, inspired by the Puccini opera Madame Butterfly.(3) Although it was first shown on Broadway 1957, a popular production during this era was West Side Story. It is an adaptation of Romeo and Juliet where two families are sworn enemies and two adolescents betray the families and fall in love. One of Julie Nordeen’s fondest memories while in the theater department was when Eddie Gasper and his wife, who were in the original production of West Side Story on Broadway, came to Concordia to choreograph the school’s production. She claimed that it was very exciting and big for the school. Gasper and his wife then stayed and ran the Red River Dance and Performing Center in Fargo, North Dakota. Today, their son Matt Gasper is running the center.
Theater and performing arts were important aspects within the 20th century whether it became controversial or not. The arts program at Concordia was and is an important part to students' lives and their education. Theater wasn’t Julie’s only major but for her, the theater was really what she loved and where she spent her time.
Essay by Alyssa Hanson
(1) Alan Read, Theatre and Everyday Life: An Ethics of Performance, (New York: Taylor & Francis, 1993), 74.
(2) Read, Theatre and Everyday Life, 56.
(3) Read, Theatre and Everyday Life, 91.