Special Events

Join the Tufts OLLI community for a special lecture with Barbara Wallace Grossman, Professor, Theatre, Dance, and Performance Studies at Tufts University as she dives into Cabaret the musical, and how she approached her retelling of the story while directing the Spring 2025 production at Tufts. 

About the Tufts production:

First produced as a Broadway musical in 1966, reimagined multiple times since then on stage and screen, Cabaret arrives at Tufts in Winter 2025. Set in the waning years of the Weimar Republic on the verge of Hitler’s catastrophic rise, Cabaret entertains, engages, and terrifies. At a volatile moment in our nation and the world, how will it speak to you? What lessons are there for us about the spread of fascism, bigotry, and complacency? Can this iconic musical inspire constructive dialogue on our campus and help us find common ground? 

Full event details and the link to RSVP are available to current members in the Tufts OLLI Weekly Digest.

Women’s stories should constitute half of the stories told, but they do not. The written record and the filmic record over-document the stories and histories of men. As an example, only 18% of the biographies on Wikipedia are of women. Women of color and the stories of women from marginalized groups are particularly underrepresented.

The Half the History Project aims to change this.

Through short-form biography, film, and podcast, we curate, archive, and disseminate diverse women’s stories. With an initial focus on women in the United States, our stories narrate the lives of some women who were well-known in their times or in their fields, as well as many women who were not.

Join your fellow OLLI members and the Half the History team, Tufts faculty Jennifer Burton

Professor of the Practice, Film, and Julie Dobrow Director, Center for Interdisciplinary Studies, Tufts University as they discuss their most recent projects and inspiration for Half the History. 

Full event details and the link to RSVP will be available to current members in upcoming Tufts OLLI Weekly Digest.

The 2024-2025 season is the first of two seasons with programs designed to tie into the historical themes of the American Revolutionary War as identified by the Lex250 committee and according to its lecture series. The season finale opens with James Hewitt’s The Battle of Trenton and explores the attitudes, mistakes and reasons people emigrated to America. Those stories are represented through the music immigrants brought with them, enriching our nation despite the challenges they faced. While the stories are as varied as was America’s attitude toward immigrants, these stories are important because all those who came to America looked for a new beginning and hope for the future — which has been America’s promise.

Full event details and registration links will be shared with current members in upcoming Weekly Digests.