My Fair Lady is Lerner & Loewe's most successful musical, based on the George Bernard Shaw play Pygmalion. Henry Higgins, a professor of phonetics, boasts to his friend, Colonel Pickering, that he can train any woman to speak properly. He chooses Eliza Doolittle, a poor girl with a strong Cockney accent, whom he encounters selling flowers in Covent Garden. This score is arranged for piano and voice.

Theatre as Human Action: An Introduction to Theatre Arts, Third Edition is designed for the college student who may be unacquainted with many plays and has seen a limited number of theatre productions. Focusing primarily on four plays, this textbook aims to inform the student about theatre arts, stimulate interest in the art form, lead to critical thinking about theatre, and prepare the student to be a more informed and critical theatregoer. The four plays central to this book are the tragedy Macbeth, the landmark African American drama A Raisin in the Sun, the American comedy classic You Can't Take It with You, and-new to this edition-the contemporary hip-hop musical Hamilton. At the beginning of the text, each play is described with plot synopses (and suggested video versions), and then these four representative works are referred to throughout the book. In addition to looking at both the theoretical and practical aspects of theatre arts-from the nature of theatre and drama to how it reflects society-the author also explains the processes that playwrights, actors, designers, directors, producers, and critics go through. In addition to Hamilton, this edition includes full color images throughout, as well as revised chapters and expanded and updated material on the technical aspects of theatre, coverage of children's theatre and British theatre, the role of drama as therapy, and the importance of diversity in theatre today. Structured into ten chapters, each looking at a major area or artist-and concluding with the audience and critics-the unique approach of Theatre as Human Action thoroughly addresses all of the major topics to be found in an introduction to theatre text.

Experiencing Broadway Music: A Listener's Companion explores approximately the last century of American musical theater, beginning with the early-twentieth-century shift from European influenced operettas and bawdy variety shows to sophisticated works of seamlessly integrated song and dance that became uniquely American. It concludes with an examination of current musical trends and practices on Broadway. As a musician who works on Broadway and in developmental musical theater, Kat Sherrell draws on her knowledge both as a historian of Broadway musical form and as a professional Broadway musician to offer an insider's perspective on the development and execution of the past and present Broadway scores. Despite its enormous breadth, and given the historical significance of the musical in modern popular culture, Experiencing Broadway Music provides listeners-whether they know musical theater well or not at all-with the tools and background necessary to gain an understanding of the highly variegated structure and character of the Broadway musical over the past century.

The story of Joan of Arc's mother, a sensible, hard-working, God-fearing peasant woman whose faith is upended as she deals with the baffling journey of her odd and extraordinary daughter. This riveting play is an epic tale told through an unexpected and remarkable perspective.

(Vocal Selections). All the songs from the family-friendly stage musical from Disney and Cameron Mackintosh: Chim Chim Cher-ee * Feed the Birds * Let's Go Fly a Kite * The Perfect Nanny * A Spoonful of Sugar * Step in Time * Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious * and more. Includes a beautiful 8-page color section of photos from the Broadway production as well as an introduction from George Stiles and Anthony Drewe

In a Gotham-like city, a depletion of the Earth's water supply has led to a government-enforced ban on private toilets. The privilege to pee is regulated by a single malevolent company that profits by charging for one of humanity's most basic needs. From amongst the people, a hero has risen who will lead them to freedom. A grand, mischievous love letter to the conventions of musical theatre, Urinetown depicts a world wracked by ecological disaster, caught in the throes of corporate greed, and ultimately toppled by the best of intentions. Praised by critics for reinvigorating the contemporary musical, Urinetown is one of the most distinctive, intelligent and jubilant theatrical experiences of the twenty-first century. It opened at New York City's Fringe Festival, then transferred to Broadway in September 2001, winning three Tony Awards, including Best Book of a Musical. Urinetown received its UK premiere at the St James Theatre, London, in February 2014, later transferring to the Apollo Theatre in September, in a production directed by Jamie Lloyd. This edition includes a preface by playwright David Auburn and extensive introductions by each of the authors.

She said, "I became a singer because I couldn't get work as an actress," but Barbra Streisand not only became both but revolutionized the two professions. Her music transformed the smooth, uninflected style of the Frank Sinatras and Ella Fitzgeralds into an engine of dramatic vocalism in which each song is like a miniature three-act play. And Streisand's films changed forever the ideal of how a movie star chooses roles, going from musicals to dramas to comedies, from period fare to ultra-modern tales, from Funny Girl to The Way We Were to Yentl. mainstream show-business principal to deconstruct an artist On Streisand begins with a broad year-by-year outline of the landmark achievements and a few of her more whimsical escapades, as when Rex Reed apologizes for an oafish interview piece and she responds with "I had more respect for him when he hated me." This is followed by a long essay on how Streisand's idiosyncratic self-realization marks her as a unique national treasure, an artist without limits. Then comes the major part of the book, a work-by-work analysis. This section is broken down into separate chapters, each organized chronologically: the stage shows, then the television shows and concerts, then the movies, and last (because longest) the recordings. Throughout, Mordden follows Streisand's independence, which he sees as her central quality. Throughout all of the chapters on Streisand's shows, concerts, films, and recordings, Mordden illustrates how she was exercising individualistic control of her career from her very first audition, and how the rest of her professional life unfolded from that point. pioneered an intense and even passionate singing style at A book written by an opinionated expert whose prose is consistently full of flair and wit, On Streisand: An Opinionated Guide will appeal to general readers in all aspects of American life that Streisand has touched, from film to television to popular music to stardom. Ella Fitzgerald and Frank Sinatra. Further, like Dustin Hoffman and Jack Nicholson she was one of the new wave actors of the 1960s who broke away from the standard models for movie stars. But Streisand has much greater range than others of this kind, as comfortable in musical comedy as in serious drama. Thus, she has moved from the madcap roles of Hello, Dolly! and What's Up, Doc? to the tale of a young woman at war with patriarchal religious fundamentalism (in Yentl) and the insanity hearing of a prostitute who has killed (in self-defense) and whose parents want to put her away to keep her from revealing that her step-father has preyed on her sexually. Further, Streisand has directed three of her films, rare enough for an actor but perhaps especially for a woman. An American Original, Streisand is controversial as well, as all Originals are. Mediocrities may be dull, but they never get bad reviews; Streisand has irritated many a sensibility. As she herself has said, "I'm a liberal, opinionated Jewish feminist-I push a lot of buttons." There is as well the "I'm so wonderful" vanity that has haunted some of her later work, as when she records duets with the rich and famous but isolates herself from them, letting the editing of the tapes bring them together, as if she were an ice princess who might melt upon human contact. Streisand, as her own movie producer, has also been accused of recutting the director's final version to flatter her shots over those of her colleagues. And The Mirror Has Two Faces seems designed to let Streisand direct her own Cinderella tale, not unlike the old Hollywood romances in which the secretary takes off her glasses and the boss cries, "Miss Johnson!...Clarice... Why, you're... you're beautiful!" Nevertheless, Streisand has been, in all, an invigorating artist, not only unique but extraordinary. It would be impossible to imagine what American culture would have been like without her.

Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart are one of the defining duos of musical theater, contributing dozens of classic songs to the Great American Songbook and working together on over 40 shows before Hart's death. With hit after hit on both Broadway and the West End, they produced many of the celebrated songs of the '20s and '30s-such as "Manhattan," "The Lady is a Tramp," and "Bewitched"-that remain popular favorites with great cultural resonance today. Yet the early years of these iconic collaborators have remained largely unexamined. We'll Have Manhattan: The Early Work of Rodgers & Hart provides unprecedented insight into the first, formative period of Rodgers and Hart's collaboration. Author Dominic Symonds examines the pair and their work from their first meeting in 1919 to their brief flirtation with Hollywood in the early 1930s as they left the theater to explore sound film. During this time, their output was prodigious, progressive, and experimental. They developed their characteristic style and a new approach to musical theater writing that provided the groundwork for the development of the Broadway musical. Symonds also analyzes the theme of identity that runs throughout Rodgers and Hart's work, how the business side of the theater affected their artistic output, and their continued experimentation with a song's dramatic role within a narrative. We'll Have Manhattan goes beyond a biographical or historical look at Rodgers and Hart's early years-it's also an accessible but authoritative study of their material. Symonds documents their early shows and provides deft critical and analytical commentary on their evolving practice and its influence on the subsequent development of the American musical. Fans of musical theater and devotees of Rodgers and Hart will find this definitive exploration of their early works to be an essential addition to their Broadway library.

The American musical has long provided an important vehicle through which writers, performers, and audiences reimagine who they are and how they might best interact with the world around them. Musicals are especially good at this because they provide not only an opportunity for us to enact dramatic versions of alternative identities, but also the material for performing such alternatives in the real world, through songs and the characters and attitudes those songs project.

This book addresses a variety of specific themes in musicals that serve this general function: fairy tale and fantasy, idealism and inspiration, gender and sexuality, and relationships, among others. It also considers three overlapping genres that are central, in quite different ways, to the projection of personal identity: operetta, movie musicals, and operatic musicals.

Among the musicals discussed are "Camelot, Candide; Chicago; Company; Evita; Gypsy; Into the Woods; Kiss Me, Kate; A Little Night Music; Man of La Mancha; Meet Me in St. Louis; The Merry Widow; Moulin Rouge; My Fair Lady; Passion; The Rocky Horror Picture Show; Singin' in the Rain; Stormy Weather; Sweeney Todd;" and "The Wizard of Oz."

Complementing the author's earlier work, "The American Musical and the Formation of National Identity," this book completes a two-volume thematic history of the genre, designed for general audiences and specialists alike.

In dieser Studie stellt der Autor Fausts Werdegang vom Gelehrten zum OEkonomen, Landesplaner und Unternehmer dar und zeigt durch die innovative "geographische Deutung" des funften Akts, inwiefern durch Fausts Neulandgewinnung eine bluhende Kulturlandschaft hat entstehen koennen. Bislang bestand in der Faust-Forschung weitgehend Konsens daruber, dass Faust am Ende des Dramas ein Egomane und ein Illusionist ist und dass dessen Neulandprojekt scheitern wird. Der Autor zeigt hier, dass ganz im Gegenteil Fausts wirtschaftliches Wirken und damit sein ganzes Leben (trotz so mancher Schattenseiten) von Erfolg gekroent ist. Durch diese neue Sichtweise weist das Buch den Weg zu einem positiven Faust-Bild.

"An Englishman's way of speaking absolutely classifies him, The moment he talks he makes some other Englishman despise him." - Henry George Bernard Shaw famously refused to permit any play of his "to be degraded into an operetta or set to any music except its own." Allowing his beloved Pygmalion to be supplanted by a comic opera was therefore unthinkable; yet Lerner and Loewe transformed it into My Fair Lady (1956), a musical that was to delight audiences and critics alike. By famously reversing Shaw's original ending, the show even dared to establish a cunningly romantic ending. Keith Garebian delves into the libretto for a fresh take, and explores biographies of the show's principal artists to discover how their roles intersected with real life. Rex Harrison was an alpha male onstage and off, Julie Andrews struggled with her 'chaste diva' image, and the direction of the sexually ambiguous Moss Hartcontributed to the musical's sexual coding.

2014 Lucille Lortel Award Nominations Outstanding Choreographer, Marguerite Derricks Outstanding Lead Actress in a Musical, Barrett Wilbert Weed2014 Drama Desk Awards Nominations Outstanding Actress in a Musical, Barrett Wilbert Weed Outstanding Music, Kevin Murphy and Laurence O'Keefe 2014 Off Broadway Alliance Awards Nomination Best New Musical Heathers The Musical is the darkly delicious story of Veronica Sawyer, a brainy, beautiful teenage misfit who hustles her way into the most powerful and ruthless clique at Westerberg High: the Heathers. But before she can get comfortable atop the high school food chain, Veronica falls in love with the dangerously sexy new kid J.D. When Heather Chandler, the Almighty, kicks her out of the group, Veronica decides to bite the bullet and kiss Heather's aerobicized ass... but J.D. has another plan for that bullet. Brought to you by the award-winning creative team of Kevin Murphy (Reefer Madness, "Desperate Housewives"), Laurence O'Keefe (Bat Boy, Legally Blonde) and Andy Fickman (Reefer Madness, She's the Man). Heathers The Musical is a hilarious, heartfelt and homicidal new show based on the greatest teen comedy of all time. With its moving love story, laugh-out-loud comedy and unflinching look at the joys and anguish of high school, Heathers will be New York's most popular new musical. Are you in, or are you out?

Gestures of Music Theater: The Performativity of Song and Dance offers new cutting edge essays focusing on Song and Dance as performative gestures that not only entertain but also act on audiences and performers. The chapters range across musical theatre, opera, theatre and other artistic practices, from Glee to Gardzienice, Beckett to Disney, Broadway to Turner Prize winning sound installation. The chapters draw together these diverse examples of vocality and physicality by exploring their affect rather than through considering them as texts. This book considers performativity in relation to Dramaturgy, Transition, Identity, Context, Practice, Community and finally, Writing. The book reveals how the texture of music theatre, containing as it does the gestures of song and dance, is performative in dense, interwoven, dialogical and paradoxical ways, partly caused by the intertextual and interdisciplinary energies of its make-up, partly by its active dynamism in performance. The book's contributors derive methodologies from many disciplines, seeking in many ways to resist and explode discrete discipline-based enquiry. They share methodologies and performance repertoires with discipline-based scholarship from theatre studies, musicology and cultural studies, but there are many other approaches and case studies which we also embrace. Together, they view these as neighboring voices whose dialogue enriches the study of contemporary music theatre.

"Priceless and peerless...a thrilling work of theatricality."--Wayman Wong, "San Francisco Examiner"

In a Maine coastal village toward the end of the 19th century swaggering carefree carnival barker Billy Bigelow captivates and marries naive millworker Julie Jordan. Billy loses his job just as he learns that Julie is pregnant and a desperately intent upon providing a decent life for his family a he is coerced into being an accomplice to a robbery. Caught in the act and facing the certainty of prison he takes his own life and is sent up there. Billy is allowed to return to earth for one day 15 years later and he encounters the daughter he never knew. She is a lonely friendless teenager her father's reputation as a thief and bully having haunted her throughout her young life. How Billy instills a sense of hope and dignity in both the child and her mother is a dramatic testimony to the power of love. It's easy to understand why of all the shows they created ECarouselE was Rodgers and Hammerstein's personal favorite.

My Fair Lady is Lerner & Loewe's most successful musical, based on the George Bernard Shaw play Pygmalion. Henry Higgins, a professor of phonetics, boasts to his friend, Colonel Pickering, that he can train any woman to speak properly. He chooses Eliza Doolittle, a poor girl with a strong Cockney accent, whom he encounters selling flowers in Covent Garden. This songbook of vocal selections from the popular musical is arranged for piano and voice with guitar chords.

The Oxford Handbook of The American Musical offers new and cutting-edge essays on the most important and compelling issues and topics in the growing, interdisciplinary field of musical-theater and film-musical studies. Taking the form of a "keywords" book, it introduces readers to the concepts and terms that define the history of the musical as a genre and that offer ways to reflect on the specific creative choices that shape musicals and their performance on stage and screen. The handbook offers a 9780199973842 of essays written by leading experts in the field, organized within broad conceptual groups, which together capture the breadth, direction, and tone of musicals studies today. Each essay traces the genealogy of the term or issue it addresses, including related issues and controversies, positions and problematizes those issues within larger bodies of scholarship, and provides specific examples drawn from shows and films. Essays both re-examine traditional topics and introduce underexplored areas. Reflecting the concerns of scholars and students alike, the authors emphasize critical and accessible perspectives, and supplement theory with concrete examples that may be accessed through links to the handbook's website. Taking into account issues of composition, performance, and reception, the book's contributors bring a wide range of practical and theoretical perspectives to bear on their considerations of one of America's most lively, enduring artistic traditions. The Oxford Handbook of The American Musical will engage all readers interested in the form, from students to scholars to fans and aficionados, as it analyses the complex relationships among the creators, performers, and audiences who sustain the genre.

A bawdy, fast-paced, raunchy comedy musical from one of the world's most influential and innovative creators of musical theatre, loosely based on the plays of Plautus. Pseudolus, a simpering slave, is trying to win his own freedom by cooking up a romance for his master's son, Hero, with the pretty young virgin Philia. But there's a problem - not only is Philia owned by Marcus Lycus, an infamous courtesan dealer, but she's also already promised to swaggering soldier Miles Gloriosus... and neither of them are keen to give her up. Stephen Sondheim's A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, with a book by Burt Shevelove and Larry Gelbart, ran for three years on Broadway. The first British production, starring Frankie Howerd as the cowardly slave Pseudolus, ran almost as long and spawned the TV series Up Pompeii! A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum won the 1962 Tony Award for Best Musical.

Paul Gemignani is one of the titans of the modern musical theater industry. Serving as musical director for more than forty Broadway productions since 1971, his collaborations with Stephen Sondheim, Andrew Lloyd Webber, John Kander, Fred Ebb, Hal Prince, Michael Bennett, and Alan Menken have led to countless accolades for his collaborators, but due to the near invisible position of the musical director in the Broadway industry, Gemignani's story is often overlooked. GEMIGNANI seeks to not only bring the reader into the orchestra pit to learn Gemignani's story, but also to educate the reader about the crucial role a music director plays in bringing some of the most iconic musicals in Broadway history to life. Born into a second-generation Italian American family during the aftershocks of the Great Depression, Gemignani worked his way up from playing percussion in USO bands to conducting before Leonard Bernstein, all before becoming a pivotal player in the team that brought some of the most successful musicals of the late twentieth century to the stage. Sweeney Todd, Evita, Merrily We Roll Along, Sunday in the Park with George, and Into the Woods would be quite different without his key contributions, and many of the sonic markers we now associate with the postmodern musical theater can be traced to Gemignani's careful curiosity to expand the bounds of what was possible.

From Adelaide in "Guys and Dolls" to Nina in "In the Heights" and Elphaba in "Wicked," female characters in Broadway musicals have belted and crooned their way into the American psyche. In this lively book, Stacy Wolf illuminates the women of American musical theatre - performers, creators, and characters -- from the start of the cold war to the present day, creating a new, feminist history of the genre. Moving from decade to decade, Wolf first highlights the assumptions that circulated about gender and sexuality at the time. She then looks at the leading musicals to stress the key aspects of the plays as they relate to women, and often finds overlooked moments of empowerment for female audience members. The musicals discussed here are among the most beloved in the canon--"West Side Story," "Cabaret," "A Chorus Line," "Phantom of the Opera," and many others--with special emphasis on the blockbuster "Wicked." Along the way, Wolf demonstrates how the musical since the mid-1940s has actually been dominated by women--women onstage, women in the wings, and women offstage as spectators and fans.

Music and Book by James Valcq, Lyrics and Book by Fred Alley Based on the film by Lee David Zlotoff Musical Drama Characters: 3 male, 4 female Unit Set A feisty parolee follows her dreams, based on a page from an old travel book, to a small town in Wisconsin and finds a place for herself working at Hannah's Spitfire Grill. It is for sale but there are no takers for the only eatery in the depressed town, so newcomer Percy suggests to Hannah that she raffle it off. Entry fees are one hundred dollars and the best essay on why you want the grill wins. Soon, mail is arriving by the wheelbarrow full and things are definitely cookin' at the Spitfire Grill. "A soul satisfying...work of theatrical resourcefulness. A compelling story that flows with grace and carries the rush of anticipation. The story moves, the characters have many dimensions and their transformations are plausible and moving. The musical is freeing. It is penetrated by honesty and it glows." -The New York Times "Soulful...The amiable country flavored tunes and lyrics are rendered with the kind of conviction and expertise that make them transcendent. What in normal times would be a joy is, in these troubled ones, sheer nourishment." -New York Magazine "Soaring melodies!...Well before the show reaches its conclusion, many...city slickers in the audience may be ready to enter Percy's raffle." -The Wall Street Journal "An abundance of warmth, spirit and goodwill!...Some of the most engaging and instantly infectious melodies I've heard in an original musical in some time." - USA Today

America has gone Hamilton crazy. Lin-Manuel Miranda's Tony-winning musical has spawned sold-out performances, a triple platinum cast album, and a score so catchy that it is being used to teach U.S. history in classrooms across the country. But just how historically accurate is Hamilton? And how is the show itself making history? Historians on "Hamilton" brings together a collection of top scholars to explain the Hamilton phenomenon and explore what it might mean for our understanding of America's history. The contributors examine what the musical got right, what it got wrong, and why it matters. Does Hamilton's hip-hop take on the Founding Fathers misrepresent our nation's past, or does it offer a bold positive vision for our nation's future? Can a musical so unabashedly contemporary and deliberately anachronistic still communicate historical truths about American culture and politics? And is Hamilton as revolutionary as its creators and many commentators claim? Perfect for students, teachers, theatre fans, hip-hop heads, and history buffs alike, these short and lively essays examine why Hamilton became an Obama-era sensation and consider its continued relevance in the age of Trump. Whether you are a fan or a skeptic, you will come away from this collection with a new appreciation for the meaning and importance of the Hamilton phenomenon.

Characters: 15 male, 3 female

Scenery: Interior

Winner of multiple Tony Awards including Best Musical, Kiss of the Spider Woman revamps a harrowing tale of persecution into a dazzling spectacle that juxtaposes gritty realities with liberating fantasies. Cell mates in a Latin American prison, Valentin is a tough revolutionary undergoing torture and Molina is an unabashed homosexual serving eight years for deviant behavior. Molina shares his fantasies about an actress, Aurora (originated on Broadway by Chita Rivera) with Valentin. One of her roles is a Spider Woman who kills with a kiss.

"Thrilling."-- N.Y. Times.

"Compelling, beautiful, funny and moving.... Has] a cinematic fluidity and a poetic charge."-- N.Y. Daily News.

"Creates an entire world out of a prison cell.... Dazzling."-- Newsweek.