Alumni Robbie Armstrong ’21 and Lynn Spector ’15 join the team behind the hotly anticipated new musical, Paradise Square, which opens this week at Broadway’s Barrymore Theatre. Armstrong, who studied Stage Management at Columbia, is working behind the scenes as a Stage Management Production Assistant, while Spector, who graduated with an MFA in Dramaturgy, oversees writing as a script supervisor.
The musical dramatizes an overlooked moment in the history of New York City. As the Civil War unraveled in the South, free Black and Irish citizens of the infamous Five Points New York neighborhood enjoyed a rare moment of racial harmony. Paradise Square follows the Black and Irish denizens of a neighborhood watering hole, who live and love together in the build up to President Lincoln’s first Federal Draft to support the Union Army––an incident that would incite the deadly New York Draft Riots of July 1863 and undo the burgeoning community of the Five Points slum.
Robbie Armstrong is from Nashville, Tennessee. He attended the University of Colorado Colorado Springs, where he began stage managing at the Denver Center for Performing Arts and Theatreworks. After finishing a BA in Theatre and MA in Leadership, Robbie moved to Canada to teach global citizenship at McGill University. Robbie's recent stage management credits include Moulin Rouge! on Broadway, The Big Fib streaming on Disney+, WP Theatre, KGM Theatrical, The Argyle Theatre, and many events with Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS.
Lynn Spector is a dramaturg from Hershey, PA. She was an Assistant Director on Troika Entertainment’s national tour of The Color Purple, and a script supervisor for Broadway’s Moulin Rouge! and Beetlejuice. In addition to her many roles in theatre production, she has published in the journal, Studies in Musical Theatre.
