Is it Broadway or Bocconi?

The musical debuted in the theater in the early 70s and was made famous by the 1978 film starring John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John. And it has inspired, through its story and its music, entire generations. So much so that it still arrives alive and well to the present day. The musical-film in question is obviously Grease, which over the years has been revived in a thousand different versions in theaters around the world and which will land, Wednesday 4 May, at 8:30pm, on the stage of the Aula Magna in via Roentgen of Bocconi University. The title is Not Another Grease Story, revisited and made up to date by the students of the AS Bocconi Live Performance Students Association, who every year, excluding the pandemic period, stage a musical in the spaces of the university.

"This project started before the pandemic," says the president of the association Fabio Ferrara, a student enrolled in the first year of the MSc program in Economics and management in arts, culture, media and entertainment (ACME), "with other people and other ideas. Entrusted to an external director, Giancarlo Capito, Grease is a musical that knows no crisis, a milestone in this field. However, we thought of something different and the small initial changes gradually turned into a deeper revision." Also involving the music. Not because Grease wasn't fine as Jim Jacobs and Warren Casey had conceived it over 50 years ago, but because, explains Fabio Ferrara, "the most important thing for those who act is to feel the character in you, to play yourself. And so we decided to set the story, preserving the underlying plot, right at Bocconi, adapting the dialogues to the new context."

The result is a light, fun show. Perhaps ideal to mark a new beginning after two dark years for everyone. But the student association, which was founded in 2004 and was restructured in its current form in 2014, currently counts about 60 members and also does other things: "Our activities, in addition to the production of a show, range from singing to theater, from writing to reviewing shows in Milan,"resumes Fabio Ferrara, "but, also, to the organization of activities (showcases, karaoke, musical nights and videos, jam session nights, watching musicals, reviews and interviews) that can involve fans of music, theater and live performance."