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This volume contains detailed information about every musical that opened on Broadway from 2010 through the end of 2019. This book discusses the decade’s major successes, notorious failures, and musicals that closed during their pre-Broadway tryouts. In addition to including every hit and flop that debuted during the decade, this book highlights revivals and personal-appearance revues.
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 twen...
“An extraordinary collection . . . Like the work of Emily Dickinson and W. B. Yeats, Spicer’s poems still seem to come from somewhere else.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review) Winner of the Northern California Independent Booksellers Award for Poetry (2009) Winner of the American Book Award (2009) In 1965, when the poet Jack Spicer died at the age of forty, he left behind a trunkful of papers and manuscripts and a few copies of the seven small books he had seen to press. A West Coast poet, his influence spanned the national literary scene of the 1950s and ’60s, though in many ways Spicer’s innovative writing ran counter to that of his contemporaries in the New York School and th...
Ann Miller (1923-2004) was an American actress, dancer, singer and author. Best known as a tap dancer, Miller practiced all forms of dance, and some of her solo routines are considered as good as any recorded in film musical history. Despite a reputation as a kook who believed she was psychic, and the potentially flat image of a "glamour girl," Miller's wit, charm and genuine ability to act gave her and her characters depth. This biography presents Ann Miller's career in the context of her fascinating life. Her career began with child acting and included three Hollywood studio contracts, two retirements for marriage, and appearances in film, stage, variety shows, sitcoms and more. She made a comeback in the stage musical Sugar Babies, earning a Best Leading Actress in a Musical Tony Award nomination. She was even appointed an international spokesperson for MGM in the ailing years of the studio.
On March 31, 1943, the musical Oklahoma! premiered and the modern era of the Broadway musical was born. Since that time, the theatres of Broadway have staged hundreds of musicals--some more noteworthy than others, but all in their own way a part of American theatre history. With more than 750 entries, this comprehensive reference work provides information on every musical produced on Broadway since Oklahoma's 1943 debut. Each entry begins with a brief synopsis of the show, followed by a three-part history: first, the pre-Broadway story of the show, including out-of-town try-outs and Broadway previews; next, the Broadway run itself, with dates, theatres, and cast and crew, including replacements, chorus and understudies, songs, gossip, and notes on reviews and awards; and finally, post-Broadway information with a detailed list of later notable productions, along with important reviews and awards.
The first biography of poet Jack Spicer (1925-1965), a key figure in San Francisco’s gay cultural scene and in the development of American avant garde poetries.
Tony Stimac’s book is a captivating exploration of America’s national musical theatres, with a particular focus on his experience with the emerging musical theatre in China. In granular detail, he chronicles his rollercoaster of successes and failures while sharing intimate details of collaborating with the preeminent musical theater artists of our time, including George Abbott’s last musical, Kander and Ebb’s reworking of The Rink and hosting the first readings of Disney’s Beauty and the Beast. Tony provides invaluable insights into the secrets of creating innovative musicals. Passionately devoted to his art form, he struggles with the artist’s dilemma of how to balance his two great loves—his art and his family.
The Broadway musical has greatly influenced American (and world) culture. Such shows as Oklahoma! and Annie Get Your Gun are as 'American as apple pie,' while the long runs of imports like Cats, The Phantom of the Opera, and Les MisZrables have broken records. Broadway has produced such cultural icons as Ethel Merman, Yul Brynner, and Julie Andrews, and composers and lyricists such as Irving Berlin, George Gershwin, Cole Porter, Richard Rodgers, Oscar Hammerstein, Leonard Bernstein, Stephen Sondheim, Andrew Lloyd Webber, and many others have had their melodies sung on its stages. Visionaries like George Abbott, Agnes de Mille, Jerome Robbins, Bob Fosse, Tommy Tune, and Susan Stroman have bro...
Greasepaint Puritan details the life and work of Bradford Ropes, author of the bawdy 1932 novel 42nd Street, on which the classic film and its stage adaptation are based. Inspired by Ropes’s own experiences as a performer, 42nd Street “reads less like a novel than like a documentary about the lives of New York’s theatre people and, above all, about the practicalities, the personalities, and the sexual politics that go into the making of a show,” according to Richard Brody in The New Yorker. Why did Ropes’s body of work--which included a trilogy of backstage novels--and consequently his biographical footsteps, disappear into obscurity? Descended from Mayflower Pilgrims, Ropes rebell...
Traces the American musical from its rich beginnings in European opera. This book talks about the infancy of the musical - the revues, operettas, and early musical comedies, as well as the groundbreaking shows like "Oklahoma!" and "Show Boat", with references to how history, literature, fashion, popular music and movies influenced musical theater.