Discover Girl From The North Country at Dr. Phillips Center and Bob Dylan’s musical soul in the library stacks

Even if his distinct voice, folky musical style and frequent harmonica use aren’t your cup of tea, chances are you’ve heard of Bob Dylan. A talented singer-songwriter whose soulful, philosophical lyrics have been the voice of Americana counterculture for decades, Dylan is the recipient of almost every award for music imaginable. He’s won ten Grammys, a Golden Globe and an Academy Award; he’s received the Presidential Medal of Freedom and been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. He even won the 2016 Nobel Prize for Literature, a testament to the poetic expression in each of his compositions.

But Tony Award-winning musical Girl From The North Country features Bob Dylan’s music in a way it’s never been heard before. Set in Dylan’s birthplace of Duluth, Minnesota in the midst of the Great Depression, Girl From The North Country introduces us to a group of wayward travelers whose lives intersect in a guesthouse filled with music, life and hope – in spite of a looming foreclosure. Twenty legendary songs, including “All Along The Watchtower,” “Slow Train” and “Like A Rolling Stone” are reimagined to tell this remarkable story.

While Girl From The North Country has drawn comparisons to such titans of American literature as Thornton Wilder, John Steinbeck and Arthur Miller, it is an experience all its own: a “heartbreakingly personal and universal” musical that the New York Times proclaims “occupies territory previously unmapped on Broadway” and “speaks its own hypnotic language.” This profoundly beautiful production, written by celebrated playwright Conor McPherson and featuring Tony Award-winning orchestrations by Simon Hale, is brought to vivid life by an extraordinary company of actors and musicians.

You can catch Girl From The North Country at Dr. Phillips Center from September 24-29. In the meantime, our librarians have curated title lists of materials available at your local OCLS branch to help you discover a new favorite song, study the impact of the Great Depression, and understand the sound and soul of the era.

If you want to listen to and learn more about Bob Dylan:

1. Dylan on Dylan: Interviews and Encounters by Jeff Burger
2. The Philosophy of Modern Song by Bob Dylan
3. Bob Dylan: All the Songs by Philippe Margotin
4. Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story (DVD)
5. No Direction Home (DVD) 
6. I’m Not There (DVD) 
7. The Unplugged Rehearsals (CD)
8. Rough and Rowdy Ways (CD)
9. Shadow Kingdom (CD)
10. Live 1962-1966 (Rare Performances from the Copyright Collections) (CD)

If you’re interested in the Great Depression from a historical perspective:

1. The Great Depression: A Diary by Benjamin Roth
2. The Great Depression: America in the 1930s by T.H. Watkins
3. In the Eye of the Great Depression: New Deal Reporters and the Agony of the American People by John F. Bauman & Thomas H. Coode
4. The Thirties; America and the Great Depression by Fon W. Boardman, Jr.
5. A Chance to Harmonize: How FDR’s Hidden Music Unit Sought to Save America from the Great Depression – One Song at a Time by Sheryl Kaskowitz
6. Dancing in the Dark: A Cultural History of the Great Depression by Morris Dickstein
7.  Florida in the Great Depression: Desperation and Defiance by Nick Wynne
8. The Great Depression (DVD)
9. The Great Depression & The New Deal (DVD)
10. Midwest Heartland: Theodore Roosevelt to the Homestead Act (DVD)

If you’re hungry for fiction with a similar setting and themes:

1. Of Mice And Men by John Steinbeck
2. Call It Sleep by Henry Roth
3. As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner
4. The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner
5. The Grapes of Wrath (DVD)
6. Our Town (DVD)
7. O Brother, Where Art Thou? (DVD)
8. The Journey of Natty Gann (DVD)

Girl From The North Country runs approximately 2 hours and 30 minutes including intermission. 
The production includes flashing light, bursts of sound, on-stage smoking and mature language. Recommended for ages 12 and up. 

A limited number of passes to Girl From The North Country are available through Local Wanderer, the library’s culture pass program. Dr. Phillips Center also offers rush ticket pricing of $35 for best available seats 2 hours prior to curtain, available by cash or credit card sales at Dr. Phillips Center box office only. Rush tickets are limited, 2 tickets per valid ID. Rush tickets are available to students, educators, active military and veterans, first responders and seniors.