Courtesy Ordway Center for the Performing Arts
The Ordway Center for the Performing Arts recently presented Billy Elliot, the musical inspired by the movie of the same name—which was not a musical. Billy Elliot is a young boy growing up in a small Northern England coal-mining town. The year is 1984 and the story centers on the actual strike of the British National Union of Mineworkers in opposition to the threatened closure of mines by Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. The strike lasted a year but eventually failed. In the next 10 years the entire industry was dismantled, with almost 300,000 losing their jobs.
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