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The WaaMu Show's 90th Anniversary

Long time Waa-Mu director, Dominic Missimi takes viewers down memory lane of "the greatest college show in America!" This flashback includes a rare visit to the Waa-Mu storage room in the attic of Cohn Auditorium and a rare clip of Heather Headley's show stopping performance in the 1995 production of "Rites of Spring." ____ ▶️ Subscribe: https://bit.ly/NorthwesternUYTSubscribe Follow Northwestern on social media: -Instagram: https://instagram.com/northwesternu -TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@northwestern.u -Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/northwesternu -LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/school/northwestern-university -Facebook: https://facebook.com/northwesternu Northwestern on the Web: -Northwestern Homepage: https://northwestern.edu -Northwestern Now News: https://news.northwestern.edu -Northwestern Magazine: https://magazine.northwestern.edu

Northwestern University

2 years ago
[music] One of the things that makes WAA-MU  so special is the fact that we have amazing students at Northwestern. But when you combine that with talent, it  makes it pretty easy to put on a student show that requires excellent  singing and dancing and acting. I'm Dominic Masimi and for 19 years I directed  the greatest college show in America WAA-Mu. In 1920 there were two dramatic  organizations on campus one was called Hermit and Crow.  The other was the W.A.A. show. They decided to bring the
two groups together  to try to raise money to build a student union. That's how we got the name. It became the WAA  show which was Women's Athletic Association and the gentleman had changed their  name to the men's union, M.U. - WAA-MU. The first show was in 1929 and that  was called "Good Morning Glory". It was just like a broadway musical but over the  years slowly it evolved into more of a review with lots of comedy sketches separated by big  production numbers. And that's really the kind of
review that I inherited when i started in 1994. Can't believe I'm coming up to this room. The last  time was after my last WAA-MU show "Keeping Time", so this will be an experience. Oh my God! Look at all those orchestral scores. I think WAA-MU is an incredible educational  experience for the students. Watching this show coming together and many of them being very very  important parts of how this show comes together. Oh my God. This is one, I have to take this out.  This number "Children of Pr
ivilege" was perhaps the most incredible number that I've ever staged  and it had nothing to do with me. It had to do with the fact that it was being sung by Heather  Headley. And it's one of the few things that happened where she stopped the show every night.  It came to a halt because she was so incredible. This looks more like how I remember the storage  room because it was often just all over the place. Uh, oh of course the most famous song in WAA-MU  "To The Memories". That was sung year af
ter year. Before the night has ended, let us raise our glasses high in a  toast to the memories we cherish. When I think of my favorite memories, my memories are always on closing night  of every WAA-MU show I would go and stand backstage with the crew. We'd watch the seniors  sing the senior song and the tears would begin to flow on stage. And then by the time they got to  "To The Memories" we were all like basket cases. What do I hope for the next 90 years of WAA-MU, 1:  I hope that it continu
es I hope that it continues to excite students about the act of creation.  And I hope that it will give them kind of a very wonderful gratification of being part  of this art form that we call music theater.

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