Discount Tix to Billy Elliot the Musical

(Metropolitan Washington Council, AFL-CIO)It’s not often that you see picket lines onstage, much less at the august Kennedy Center, but Billy Elliot the Musical brings the class struggle of the bitter 1994/95 miners’ strike in England to vivid life. For a chance at a pair of free tickets to the January 3 7:30p performance, email us at streetheat@dclabor.org by noon this Thursday, December 22 and the lucky winners will be determined by random drawing. Based on the internationally acclaimed film, Billy Elliot the Musical is brought to life by a phenomenal cast of 45 performers and the Tony Award–winning creative team–director Stephen Daldry (who also directed the 2000 film), choreographer Peter Darling and writer Lee Hall–along with music legend Elton John, whose score is called “show-stopping and electric” by the New York Times. Set in a small town in the North of England against the background of this historic strike, Billy, the son of a miner, discovers an interest in dance, which conflicts with his working-class community, locked in a bitter battle for survival against Maggie Thatcher’s drive to privatize the national coal industry and wipe out an entire way of life. The musical manages to deftly address class struggle while celebrating the joys of song and dance.