Provides season-by-season, show-by-show coverage of the American musical, from 1767 to the present, giving a plot synopsis, an idea of the physical production, and principal statistics for each show.
Author: Gerald Bordman
Publisher: Oxford University Press on Demand
ISBN: 9780195130744
Category: Music
Page: 917
View: 173
Provides season-by-season, show-by-show coverage of the American musical, from 1767 to the present, giving a plot synopsis, an idea of the physical production, and principal statistics for each show.
Leaving appraisal and plot summaries to other classic references, these volumes are the most in-depth documentary source on the New York musical stage available, with a chapter that carries the timeline for selected plays back to 1750.
Author: Richard C. Norton
Publisher: Oxford University Press on Demand
ISBN: 0195088883
Category: Music
Page: 3078
View: 244
"The gorgeous illustrations in this season-by-season chronology of every musical comedy, operetta, comic opera, burlesque, and revue performed on a major New York City stage from 1851 through May 2001 might be enticement enough to acquire this set. Entries for more than 3,000 plays include details such as the full cast, crew, production staff, venues, number of performances, creative personnel, and songs, which are listed as they occur within acts when this information is known. Three indexes cover song titles, show names, and names of principal players and famous chorus members. Leaving appraisal and plot summaries to other classic references, these volumes are the most in-depth documentary source on the New York musical stage available, with a chapter that carries the timeline for selected plays back to 1750."--"The Best of the Best Reference Sources," American Libraries, May 2003.
The essays in this book examine the history of women in musical theatre, providing biographical descriptions of the women themselves; analyses and interpretations of their productions; and several accounts of how being a woman affected the ...
Author: Bud Coleman
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 9781476607276
Category: Performing Arts
Page: 292
View: 585
Throughout the twentieth century women have made significant contributions to the creation of American musical theatre. Directing, choreographing, writing, arranging, producing and designing musicals in a variety of venues throughout America, women have played a significant role in shaping the development of musical theatre both on and off Broadway and in regional, educational, and community venues. The essays in this book examine the history of women in musical theatre, providing biographical descriptions of the women themselves; analyses and interpretations of their productions; and several accounts of how being a woman affected the artists' careers. Topics include the similarities among the careers of successful but neglected lyricists Rida Johnson Young, Anne Caldwell, and Dorothy Donnelly; the Depression-era productions of Hallie Flanagan and Cheryl Crawford; the transformation of the classic "showgirl" image through the dances and stage movement created by prominent female choreographers; and a survey of numerical data highlighting the discrepancy between the number of men versus the number of women hired to direct professional musical productions in various venues across the United States.
Oklahoma! and the integrated book musical -- Musical theater in nineteenth-century America -- Broadway at the turn of the century -- The teens -- The twenties -- The thirties -- The forties -- The fifties -- The sixties -- The seventies -- ...
Author: James Leve
Publisher:
ISBN: 0195379608
Category: Musicals
Page: 448
View: 784
American Musical Theater provides a chronological history of musical theater within a cultural context. Covering the major artistic trends, seminal works, and leading figures in the field, the text uses case study musicals in each chapter as a lens through which to explore themes and developments in the evolution of musical theater over time. In addition to exposing students to the musical theater canon, author James Leve encourages them to think across the disciplines, drawing on their knowledge of music, literature, popular culture, and history. For anyone from diehard musical theater fans to novices to the style, American Musical Theater offers a definitive guide to this inherently American art form.
Offers a history of American musical theater from the 1920s through to the 1970s, and includes such famous works as "Oklahoma!," "The Red Mill," and "Porgy and Bess."
Author: Ethan Mordden
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 9780199892839
Category: History
Page: 346
View: 617
Offers a history of American musical theater from the 1920s through to the 1970s, and includes such famous works as "Oklahoma!," "The Red Mill," and "Porgy and Bess."
Our Musicals, Ourselves is the first full-scale social history of the American musical theater from the imported Gilbert and Sullivan comic operas of the late nineteenth century to such recent musicals as The Producers and Urinetown.
Author: John Bush Jones
Publisher: Brandeis University Press
ISBN: 9781611682236
Category: Performing Arts
Page: 426
View: 711
Our Musicals, Ourselves is the first full-scale social history of the American musical theater from the imported Gilbert and Sullivan comic operas of the late nineteenth century to such recent musicals as The Producers and Urinetown. While many aficionados of the Broadway musical associate it with wonderful, diversionary shows like The Music Man or My Fair Lady, John Bush Jones instead selects musicals for their social relevance and the extent to which they engage, directly or metaphorically, contemporary politics and culture. Organized chronologically, with some liberties taken to keep together similarly themed musicals, Jones examines dozens of Broadway shows from the beginning of the twentieth century to the present that demonstrate numerous links between what played on Broadway and what played on newspapersÕ front pages across our nation. He reviews the productions, lyrics, staging, and casts from the lesser-known early musicals (the ÒgunboatÓ musicals of the Teddy Roosevelt era and the ÒCinderella showsÓ and Òleisure time musicalsÓ of the 1920s) and continues his analysis with better-known shows including Showboat, Porgy and Bess, Oklahoma, South Pacific, West Side Story, Cabaret, Hair, Company, A Chorus Line, and many others. While most examinations of the American musical focus on specific shows or emphasize the development of the musical as an art form, JonesÕs book uses musicals as a way of illuminating broader social and cultural themes of the times. With six appendixes detailing the long-running diversionary musicals and a foreword by Sheldon Harnick, the lyricist of Fiddler on the Roof, JonesÕs comprehensive social history will appeal to both students and fans of Broadway.
The author reviews these and other highlights of American musicals ... with a fascinating background on the elements that contribute to the success of a Showboat .
Author: Richard Kislan
Publisher: Hal Leonard Corporation
ISBN: 155783217X
Category: Music
Page: 310
View: 467
(Applause Books). This revised and expanded edition of Kislan's acclaimed study of America's musical theater includes a new section on "Recent Musical Theater: Issues and Problems." "The ancient union of drama and song, known as musical theater, comes in many forms vaudeville, burlesque, comic opera, minstrels, etc. The author reviews these and other highlights of American musicals ... with a fascinating background on the elements that contribute to the success of a Showboat ." King Features * "Worth study by anyone who still thinks that the musical is a collection of songs." The Stage
An invaluable guide to American musical theatre past and present, this book will be welcome reading for theatregoers everywhere.
Author: Gerald Martin Bordman
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: UOM:39015029198119
Category: Music
Page: 821
View: 419
Gerald Bordman's American Musical Theatre has become a landmark book since its publication in 1978. It chronicles American musicals, show by show and season by season, and offers a running commentary and assessment as well as providing the basic facts about each production. This updated edition includes the new shows that have opened on Broadway since the original publication. Also included are over a hundred musicals that were turn-of-the-century, cheap-priced touring shows which never played Broadway, but were the training ground for many theatre greats.
This book is the first extensive treatment of his life and contribution to dance and American musical theatre.
Author: David Payne-Carter
Publisher: Greenwood Publishing Group
ISBN: 0313304513
Category: Performing Arts
Page: 177
View: 793
Gower Champion's career spanned the years during which American musical theatre was transformed from a crude popular entertainment into a sophisticated art form. As the director and choreographer of Hello, Dolly!, 42nd Street, and other Broadway musicals, he was central to that transformation. This book is the first extensive treatment of his life and contribution to dance and American musical theatre. The volume draws on the holdings of various special collections, is informed by careful analyses of Champion's scripts, and depends on information gathered through interviews with those who knew and worked with Champion throughout his legendary career.
Irene G. Dash explores the influence of Shakespeare on American musical theater through analyses of five important productions from 1938 through 1971 -- The Boys from Syracuse (The Comedy of Errors), Kiss Me, Kate (Taming of the Shrew), West Side Story (Romeo and Juliet), Your Own Thing (Twelfth Night), and Two Gentlemen of Verona. Dash argues that adaptations of Shakespeare were instrumental in the alteration of the musical theater formula from the stock plots and song forms of the 1930s musical comedy to the more organic ""integrated musical,"" where songs and dance sequences were used to advance the plot rather than break the action. In bringing together these well-known works, Dash offers a fresh look at the development of American musical theater and a new understanding of Shakespeare in the modern American context.
Concentrating on a 22-year span, this book lists both commercial successes and flops of the Golden Age-when the musicals presented on Broadway showcased timeless, memorable tunes, sophisticated comedy, and the genius of creative artists ...
Author: Corinne J. Naden
Publisher: Scarecrow Press
ISBN: 9780810877344
Category: Music
Page: 274
View: 440
The Golden Age of American Musical Theatre provides synopses, cast and production credits, song titles, and other pertinent information for over 180 musicals from Oklahoma! to On A Clear Day You Can See Forever. Concentrating on a 22-year span, this book lists both commercial successes and flops of the Golden Age-when the musicals presented on Broadway showcased timeless, memorable tunes, sophisticated comedy, and the genius of creative artists like Richard Rodgers, Oscar Hammerstein, Jerome Robbins, Leonard Bernstein, George Abbott, Moss Hart, Angela Lansbury, Robert Preston, and many others.
Nathan Hurwitz uses these factors to explain the output of each decade in turn, showing how the most popular productions spoke directly to the audiences of the time.
Author: Nathan Hurwitz
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 9781317912057
Category: History
Page: 260
View: 912
From the diverse proto-theatres of the mid-1800s, though the revues of the ‘20s, the ‘true musicals’ of the ‘40s, the politicisation of the ‘60s and the ‘mega-musicals’ of the ‘80s, every era in American musical theatre reflected a unique set of socio-cultural factors. Nathan Hurwitz uses these factors to explain the output of each decade in turn, showing how the most popular productions spoke directly to the audiences of the time. He explores the function of musical theatre as commerce, tying each big success to the social and economic realities in which it flourished. This study spans from the earliest spectacles and minstrel shows to contemporary musicals such as Avenue Q and Spiderman. It traces the trends of this most commercial of art forms from the perspective of its audiences, explaining how staying in touch with writers and producers strove to stay in touch with these changing moods. Each chapter deals with a specific decade, introducing the main players, the key productions and the major developments in musical theatre during that period.
A Manual for Performers : a Guide for Authors, Directors, Producers, Educators,
and Students : a Complete Musical Theatre Course Steven Porter. A .
FOUNDATIONS AND BEGINNINGS It is difficult to say exactly where the American musical ...
Author: Steven Porter
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 093501697X
Category: Music
Page: 138
View: 106
First Published in 1987. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.
As producer and director , cautiously at first and then with increasing audacity ,
Prince has been presenting shows that are not " just " musicals . Working at the
center of the American theatrical marketplace , in a form riddled with convention ...
Author: Foster Hirsch
Publisher: CUP Archive
ISBN: 0521336090
Category: Biography & Autobiography
Page: 187
View: 221
This comprehensive study of the career of one of Broadway's most influential director/producers discusses the quintessential elements of Prince's theatrical work and assesses his impact on both the American and British musical theater
The American marriage plot in the shows of Berlin and others often dramatizes
the developing love of two people of starkly ... These were plots that American musical theater writers revisited again and again, for they resonated deeply from
the ...
Author: Jeffrey Magee
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 9780199381012
Category: Music
Page: 394
View: 743
From patriotic "God Bless America" to wistful "White Christmas," Irving Berlin's songs have long accompanied Americans as they fall in love, go to war, and come home for the holidays. Irving Berlin's American Musical Theater is the first book to fully consider this songwriter's immeasurable influence on the American stage. Award-winning music historian Jeffrey Magee chronicles Berlin's legendary theatrical career, providing a rich background to some of the great composer's most enduring songs, from "There's No Business Like Show Business" to "Puttin' on the Ritz." Magee shows how Berlin's early experience singing for pennies made an impression on the young man, who kept hold of that sensibility throughout his career and transformed it into one of the defining attributes of Broadway shows. Magee also looks at darker aspects of Berlin's life, examining the anti-Semitism that Berlin faced and his struggle with depression. Informative, provocative, and full of colorful details, this book will delight song and theater aficionados alike as well as anyone interested in the story of a man whose life and work expressed so well the American dream.
In The Secret Life of the American Musical, Jack Viertel takes them apart, puts them back together, sings their praises, marvels at their unflagging inventiveness, and occasionally despairs over their more embarrassing shortcomings.
Author: Jack Viertel
Publisher: Sarah Crichton Books
ISBN: 9780374711252
Category: Performing Arts
Page: 336
View: 471
A New York Times Bestseller For almost a century, Americans have been losing their hearts and losing their minds in an insatiable love affair with the American musical. It often begins in childhood in a darkened theater, grows into something more serious for high school actors, and reaches its passionate zenith when it comes time for love, marriage, and children, who will start the cycle all over again. Americans love musicals. Americans invented musicals. Americans perfected musicals. But what, exactly, is a musical? In The Secret Life of the American Musical, Jack Viertel takes them apart, puts them back together, sings their praises, marvels at their unflagging inventiveness, and occasionally despairs over their more embarrassing shortcomings. In the process, he invites us to fall in love all over again by showing us how musicals happen, what makes them work, how they captivate audiences, and how one landmark show leads to the next—by design or by accident, by emulation or by rebellion—from Oklahoma! to Hamilton and onward. Structured like a musical, The Secret Life of the American Musical begins with an overture and concludes with a curtain call, with stops in between for “I Want” songs, “conditional” love songs, production numbers, star turns, and finales. The ultimate insider, Viertel has spent three decades on Broadway, working on dozens of shows old and new as a conceiver, producer, dramaturg, and general creative force; he has his own unique way of looking at the process and at the people who collaborate to make musicals a reality. He shows us patterns in the architecture of classic shows and charts the inevitable evolution that has taken place in musical theater as America itself has evolved socially and politically. The Secret Life of the American Musical makes you feel as though you’ve been there in the rehearsal room, in the front row of the theater, and in the working offices of theater owners and producers as they pursue their own love affair with that rare and elusive beast—the Broadway hit.
