Contact (musical)

Contact
Opening Night Playbill cover
Music	various
Lyrics	various
Book	John Weidman
Productions	1999 Off Broadway 2000 Broadway 2002 West End 2003 U.S. tour
Awards	Tony Award for Best Musical

Contact is a musical "dance play" that was developed by Susan Stroman and John Weidman, with its "book" by Weidman and both choreography and direction by Stroman. It ran both off-Broadway and on Broadway in 1999–2002. It consists of three separate one-act dance plays.

Contact premiered at the Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater, Lincoln Center, on September 9, 1999 (after 1999 workshop productions of parts of the show), then moved to Broadway at the Vivian Beaumont Theater, Lincoln Center, on March 30, 2000 and played for 1,010 performances there.

The show was received with critical acclaim and won the 2000 Tony Award for Best Musical (among others). The award was controversial because Contact contains no original music or live singing, and in response, a new award for Best Special Theatrical Event was introduced the following year.

A West End production opened at the Queen's Theatre in October 2002, and closed on May 10, 2003. The musical toured from May 2001 to June 2002, and started again in November 2002 in Toronto.

The original cast album was released on March 6, 2001. PBS included the show's final performance in its program Live from Lincoln Center on September 1, 2002.

Among regional productions, the musical was presented by the Virginia Stage Company (Norfolk, Virginia) in April 2006. This was the first regional theater in the US to present Contact after the Broadway, national tour and London productions and was directed by Tome Cousin, an original cast member (who was chosen by Stroman to direct).