SUU’s Community Trip to NYC For Everyone

Explore New York City while traveling with local experts from Southern Utah University and learn more about The Big Apple while worrying less about travel and room arrangements, getting tickets to popular plays or figuring out the subway system.

Instead, let SUU Community on the Go guide you through New York City this fall with behind-the-scenes tours, theatre performances, culture, food and fun. Trip participants will enjoy private tours in art museums, three Broadway performances and tour historical sites in Manhattan while learning from SUU travel experts.

Southern Utah Museum of Art Director Jessica Farling will lead tours of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the NYC Museum of Modern Art and the Whitney Museum of American Art during the trip.

“We want people traveling from our southern Utah communities to have a unique experience in New York by showing them another side to art museums,” Farling said. “The trip to The Met will be special because we will have a private tour led by Museum Hack, a group that is truly dynamic, unusual and fun.”

Jeb Branin, executive director of experiential learning at SUU, has served as a leader to many student and community trips to London promoting world-class theatre experiences and said a theatre-based trip in the United States has always been a dream.

“My trips are theatre-based — so it made sense to add a New York trip that involved Broadway,” Branin said. “Without question, Broadway and the West End are home to the world’s best English-speaking theatre.”

New York travelers will follow Branin, whose experience includes being a professor of theatre for 25 years, as he guides them through three plays. “Dear Evan Hansen,” which won five Tony Awards including Best Musical in 2017, “Come From Away,” which was nominated for seven Tony Awards, and “Kinky Boots,” Broadway’s huge-hearted, high-heeled hit with music and lyrics from Cyndi Lauper are scheduled for the trip.

For those who have never been to New York, traditional sites such as the Statue of Liberty, Ellis Island, Times Square and other historical sites are planned as well.

Community on the Go’s trip themed “The Big Apple Tour for Art and Theatre Lovers” is slated for Nov. 4-10, 2018. Other trips in 2018 include an October trip to Transylvania, Romania and Hungary taking travelers through the history of Bram Stoker’s novel “Dracula” while touring historical villas and hamlets, thermal bathhouses and forests. And for the romantic in all of us, a December trip themed “Christmas in the Alps” will take participants through historical sites and castles of Germany and Austria during the magical holiday season.

For more information about SUU Community on the Go trips, or to reserve your spot with a deposit, visit suu.edu/onthego, call (435) 865-8031 or stop by the office at 136 W. University Blvd, Suite 003, Cedar City, Utah.

Story by:
SUU Office of Community and Academic Enrichment 
Haven Scott
Photos courtesy of SUU Community on the Go