This book tells the story of producer, actor, and author Oscar Asche, one of the most commercially successful actor/managers in the first half of the 20th century. Though virtually written out of theatre history because of his triumph on the musical comedy stage, he is most frequently remembered today as having had a successful career as an actor and producer of Shakespeare. Asche was an innovator in stage lighting and one of the first to use it as a language of the stage rather than as mere illumination. During World War I, he captured the public imagination and provided audiences with escapist musicals set in fictional orients.

Oscar Asche excelled in many theatre genres, including musical comedy, pantomime, music hall, melodrama, and Shakespeare. He provided exotic erotica in orientalist musicals from "Kismet" to "Mecca" and brought unprecedented numbers of spectators to the theatre at its most difficult time. He was responsible for extending the life of musical comedy and orientalism in the theatre before cinemas would appropriate both genre and style.

The first in-depth biography of the celebrated composer/lyricist who created Hello, Dolly!, Mame, and La Cage aux Folles This revealing and comprehensive book tells the full story of Jerry Herman's life and career, from his early work in cabaret to his recent compositions for stage, screen, and television. Stephen Citron draws on extensive open-ended interviews with Jerry Herman as well as with scores of his theatrical colleagues, collaborators, and close friends. The resulting book-which sheds new light on each of Herman's musicals and their scores-abounds in fascinating anecdotes and behind-the-scenes details about the world of musical theater. Readers will find a sharply drawn portrait of Herman's private life and his creative talents. Citron's insights into Herman's music and lyrics, including voluminous examples from each of his musicals, are as instructive as they are edifying and entertaining.

A giant builds a high wall around his beautiful garden to prevent the children from playing in it. However, he is taught a valuable lesson when spring does not return and the garden remains in winter all year round. One morning the unusual sound of birdsong and the sight of a small, frail child trying to climb a tree reminds the giant how selfish he has been. He knocks down the wall, spring arrives and the giant is happy that his garden is now free for all. This enchanting sung-through musical was written especially for a large cast of young people and enjoyed three successful seasons at the Yvonne Arnaud Theatre, Guildford in 1995, 1999 and 2002. It has great opportunity for lots of chorus and solo work, which can be easily adapted according to how many children are available.

The 1957 classic American musical West Side Story has been staged by countless community and school theater groups, but none more ambitious than the 2000 production by MacMurray College, a small school in Jacksonville, Illinois. Diane Brewer, the new drama head at the college, determined to add an extra element to the usual demands of putting on a show by having deaf students perform half of the parts. Deaf Side Story presents a fascinating narrative of Brewer and the cast's efforts to mount this challenging play. Brewer turned to the Illinois School for the Deaf (ISD) to cast the Sharks, the Puerto Rican gang at odds with the Anglo Jets in this musical version of Romeo and Juliet set in the slums of New York. Hearing performers auditioned to be the Jets, and once Brewer had cast her hearing Tony and deaf Maria, then came the challenge of teaching them all to sing/sign and dance the riveting show numbers for which the musical is renowned. She also had to manage a series of sensitive issues, from ensuring the seamless incorporation of American Sign Language into the play to reassuring ISD administrators and students that the production would not be symbolic of any conflict between Deaf and hearing people. Author Mark Rigney portrays superbly the progress of the production, including the frustrations and triumphs of the leads, the labyrinthine campus and community politics, and the inevitable clashes between the deaf high school cast members and their hearing college counterparts. His representations of the many individuals involved are real and distinguished. The ultimate success of the MacMurray production reverberates in Deaf Side Story as a keen depiction of how several distinctindividuals from as many cultures could cooperate to perform a classic American art form brilliantly together.

To see a Broadway musical is to experience how a drama, using melody, harmony, and rhythm, evokes the emotion needed to perpetuate a story line. Without music, many of these plays would not succeed, failing to convey the intended message. This new edition of Swain's classic text, winner of the 1991 ASCAP Deems Taylor Award, reveals how a musical drama achieves plot movement, character development and conflict through strategic placement of song and music in 20 musical plays. Unlike critical literature that has simply explored theatrical style and production histories, this survey focuses mainly on the power of music. Illustrated with more than 150 musical excerpts and essays, Swain includes the latest research and viewpoints of contemporary critics, offering insight into dramatic expression and how renowned composers including Jerome Kern, George Gershwin, Jerry Bock, Stephen Sondheim and Andrew Lloyd Webber influenced the Broadway musical. This provides insights into the many impressive musicals to hit the stage between the years of 1927 and 1987, illuminating how specific revisions to productions such as Showboat and, Oklahoma forever changed their popularity. Learn how music is used as a symbol for psychological or emotional action from Shakespearean drama's such as Kiss Me, Kate and West Side Story, to more current dramas including Godspell, A Chorus Line, and Jesus Christ Superstar. Replete with a never seen before essay on Les Miserables, this edition also includes an expanded epilogue highlighting the phenomena behind Miss Saigon and Phantom of the Opera, "megamusicals" that changed the direction of the Broadway tradition. For professors of dramatic arts and people interested in Broadway musicals, theater, popular music and opera.

When a brash American family stay at the gothic English stately home, Canterville Chase, they fail to be the least bit frightened by Sir Simon, a ghost who is condemned by a curse to haunt the house. The young Virginia, however, searches out the ghost and embarks on a mission to set him free.

So, You're the New Musical Director! is aimed at the person who has music training but little or no experience with musical theatre, the high school choral director with a degree in music education, or the actor participating in community theatre productions. It details the duties involved in directing a Broadway musical, including overseeing singer and orchestra rehearsals and conducting the musical itself. The chapters follow the actual progression of a musical from a discussion of the production team's responsibilities to the final bow. Filled with photos, illustrations, and examples, So, You're the New Musical Director! is a comprehensive guide that no one involved in musical theatre should be without.

The 1950s saw an explosion in the American musical theater. The Broadway show, catapulted into the limelight in the 20s and solidified during the 40s thanks to Rodgers and Hammerstein, now entered its most revolutionary phase, brashly redefining itself and forging a new kind of storytelling. In Coming Up Roses: The Broadway Musical in the 1950s, Ethan Mordden gives us a guided tour of this rich decade.

With loving detail, Mordden highlights the shift in Broadway from shows that were mere star vehicles, showcasing a big-name talent, to the bolder stories, stuffed with character and atmosphere. During this period, subject matter became more intricate, even controversial, and plots more human and complex; Mordden demonstrates how, in response, musical conventions were polished, writing became more finely crafted, and dance became truly indispensable. Along the way we meet the key players: such greats as Ethel Merman, George Abbott, Jerome Robbins, Gwen Verdon, Bob Fosse, Stephen Sondheim, Frank Loesser, Cole Porter, Leonard Bernstein, and many others. We get the backstage scoop on why Guys and Dolls is so well-made, why West Side Story is so timeless, why The King and I and Gypsy pushed the envelope, and why no one ever talks about Ankles Aweigh. All this is peppered with a dash of industry gossip--the directorial struggles, last-minute script rewrites and cast replacements, the power of the poster listings--that made Broadway so nerve-wrackingly vibrant.

This passionate and informed study illuminates a crucial period in American musical theater and shows us the origins of many of the musicals recently revived to huge success on Broadway.

This encyclopedic reference to the American movie musical identifies and describes the musicals and the artists who made them. Film entries range from the legendary "The" "Jazz" "Singer" in 1927 to "Fantasia" "2000." Artists ranging from Gene Kelly to Elvis Presley, Busby Berkeley, and John Travolta are included, as are musicians as varied as Irving Berlin, Paul Williams, and the Beatles. Entries also detail animated musicals, studios, perettas, rock documentaries, sequels and remakes, and dance movies.

As a reference work or as a book for browsing, this encyclopedia serves as a valuable companion to "Stage It with Music: An Encyclopedic Guide to the American Musical Theatre" (Greenwood, 1993) and will appeal to film scholars and fans alike. Information is cross referenced throughout. A chronological list of musicals and an appendix of Academy Award-winning musicals are included.

It used to be a secret that, in its postwar heyday, the Broadway musical recruited a massive underground following of gay men. But though this once silent social fact currently spawns jokes that every sitcom viewer is presumed to be in on, it has not necessarily become better understood.

In "Place for Us, "D. A. Miller probes what all the jokes laugh off: the embarrassingly mutual affinity between a "general" cultural form and the despised "minority" that was in fact that form's implicit audience. In a style that is in turn novelistic, memorial, autobiographical, and critical, the author restores to their historical density the main modes of reception that so many gay men developed to answer the musical's call: the early private communion with original cast albums, the later camping of show tunes in piano bars, the still later reformatting of these same songs at the post-Stonewall disco. In addition, through an extended reading of "Gypsy," Miller specifies the nature of the call itself, which he locates in the postwar musical's most basic conventions: the contradictory relation between the show and the book, the mimetic tendency of the musical number, the centrality of the female star. If the postwar musical may be called a "gay" genre, Miller demonstrates, this is because its regular but unpublicized work has been to indulge men in the spectacular thrills of a femininity become their own.

Children's Musical / Cast: 10 principals, chorusScenery: Unit set This exuberant, fun packed musical written for a large cast of young people features a glitzy rock 'n' roll score and plenty of action. Unless Joey Nobody and private detective Dirk Manley find Angelo's will in time, bogus heir Deanne la Domme, the glamorous film star, will sell Angelo's New York ice cream parlour to Crazy Flavors. So get out the bobby socks and join Chuck and the gang as they rock in this sizzling hour long musical for schools and youth groups.

'Music and girls are the soul of musical comedy,' one critic wrote, early in the 1940s. But this was the age that wanted more than melody and kickline form its musical shows. The form had been running on empty for too long, as a formula for the assembly of spare parts--star comics, generic loves songs, rumba dancers, Ethel Merman. If Rodgers and Hammerstein hadn't existed, Broadway would have had to invent them; and Oklahoma! and Carousel came along just in time to announce the New Formula for Writing Musicals: Don't have a formula.

Instead, start with strong characters and atmosphere: Oklahoma!'s murderous romantic triangle set against a frontier society that has to learn what democracy is in order to deserve it; or Carousel's dysfunctional family seen in the context of class and gender war.

With the vitality and occasionally outrageous humour that Ethan Mordden's readers take for granted, the author ranges through the decade's classics--Pal Joey, Lady in the Dark, On the Town, Annie Get Your Gun, Finian's Rainbow, Brigadoon, Kiss Me, Kate, South Pacific. He also covers illuminating trivia--the spy thriller The Lady Comes Across, whose star got so into her role that she suffered paranoid hallucinations and had to be hospitalized; the smutty Follow the Girls, damned as 'burlesque with a playbill' yet closing as the longest-run musical in Broadway history; Lute Song, in which Mary Martin and Nancy Reagan were Chinese; and the first 'concept' musicals, Allegro and Love Life. Amid the fun, something revolutionary occurs. The 1920s created the musical and the 1930s gave it politics. In the 1940s, it found its soul.

It would be difficult, indeed, to imagine anyone more qualified to give us a celebration, from the perspective of an insider, of the Broadway musical. From the first run of "Guys and Dolls" in 1950 to the recent debut of "Rent," Stuart Ostrow, a prot DEGREESD'eg DEGREESD'e of the great composer-lyricist Frank Loesser, has been personally involved in many of the major Broadway productions of our time. The steadily growing number of fans of the Great White Way will delight in his reminiscences about the shows that have shaped musical theater, such as "Hello Dolly," "Funny Girl," "Man of LaMancha," "Cabaret," "1776," and "M. Butterfly"--to name just a few.

Readers of "A Producer's Broadway Journey" will certainly be entertained by OstroW's behind-the-scenes anecdotes of Bob Fosse, Barbra Streisand, Betty Buckley, Cole Porter, Lerner and Loewe, Hal Prince, Ethel Merman, and many other legends encountered in his accomplished career. But in addition to the tales or re-writes, stand-ins, near-disasters, and moments of theatrical magic, the author also provides a unique historical perspective on almost half a century of the musical.

The 1950s saw an explosion in the American musical theater. The Broadway show, catapulted into the limelight in the 20s and solidified during the 40s thanks to Rodgers and Hammerstein, now entered its most revolutionary phase, brashly redefining itself and forging a new kind of storytelling. In Coming Up Roses: The Broadway Musical in the 1950s, Ethan Mordden gives us a guided tour of this rich decade.
With loving detail, Mordden highlights the shift in Broadway from shows that were mere star vehicles, showcasing a big-name talent, to the bolder stories, stuffed with character and atmosphere. During this period, subject matter became more intricate, even controversial, and plots more human and complex; Mordden demonstrates how, in response, musical conventions were polished, writing became more finely crafted, and dance became truly indispensable. Along the way we meet the key players: such greats as Ethel Merman, George Abbott, Jerome Robbins, Gwen Verdon, Bob Fosse, Stephen Sondheim, Frank Loesser, Cole Porter, Leonard Bernstein, and many others. We get the backstage scoop on why Guys and Dolls is so well-made, why West Side Story is so timeless, why The King and I and Gypsy pushed the envelope, and why no one ever talks about Ankles Aweigh. All this is peppered with a dash of industry gossip--the directorial struggles, last-minute script rewrites and cast replacements, the power of the poster listings--that made Broadway so nerve-wrackingly vibrant.
This passionate and informed study illuminates a crucial period in American musical theater and shows us the origins of many of the musicals recently revived to huge success on Broadway.

This 1998 book takes an alternative look at the courtly masque in early seventeenth-century England. For a generation, the masque has been a favourite topic of New Historicism, because it has been seen as part of the process by which artistic works interact with politics, both shaping and reflecting the political life of a nation. These exciting essays move importantly beyond a monolithic view of culture and power in the production of masques, to one in which rival factions at the courts of James I and of Charles I represent their clash of viewpoints through dancing and spectacle. All aspects of the masque are considered, from written text and political context to music, stage picture and dance. The essays, written by distinguished scholars from around the world, present an interdisciplinary approach, with experts on dance, music, visual spectacle and politics all addressing the masque from the point of view of their speciality.

Designed to aid the student, librarian, teacher, or professional singer, this annotated bibliography provides access to more than 500 books, journals, and electronic resources. Included as well are chapters listing dictionaries and encyclopedias for opera and musical theater, biographical sources, guides to vocal literature and repertoire, and resources for vocal pedagogy and for the stage. Equally helpful are sources that list plots and synopses, translations, diction, travel and education.

Providing ready access to a variety of topics and resources necessary for vocal study, this important reference will introduce music students to reliable, essential sources for their study, assist teachers and coaches in finding reference tools, and assist reference librarians in locating sources for patrons. The alphabetical organization within subject makes this reference easy to understand and easy to access. Three indexes allow for convenient cross-referencing.

Musicals is an illustrated sourcebook for total theatre training, emphasizing the director's role in the three main building blocks for mounting a performance: preparation, production, and performance. Boland and Argentini provide a comprehensive step-by-step theatre primer which will prove invaluable to musical directors, teachers, administrators, students, and actors. After the initial decisions are made, specific guidelines in preparing the stage picture, holding auditions and casting, and running the gamut of rehearsals are provided. Lighting, costumes, creating sets and scenery, and safety precautions are also discussed. The musical number and choreography are analyzed and defined, and advice on how to use color and solve multiple scene problems is given. With opening night approaching, a checklist of what must be done is enumerated and explained. The authors provide tips on publicity, running the box office, as well as the do's and don'ts of mounting the show and its final strike. Includes a glossary of theatrical terms, a selected bibliography, and recommended sources for scenic drops, costumes, and lighting equipment.

The lyricist/librettist of The Fantasticks, the longest-running show in the history of the American theatre, here takes on a new role as guide through the magical world of the stage musical. He begins his tour with a brief history, tracing the musical's origins to the variety shows and operettas of the early 1900s, from which gradually emerged the works of such masters as Kern, Berlin, Gershwin and Porter, and a tradition best exemplified by the mid-century classics of Rodgers and Hammerstein. A break-up of that tradition, reflecting the immense changes in every aspect of postwar American life, was inevitable. So, gradually new forms evolved, and today we have the "Dance Musical", the "Concept Musical", the "Rock Musical" and the "Sung-Through Musical", all running alongside shows, some hugely successful, that revive or try to reinvent the past. How to create a musical, whatever its style, is Tom Jones's concern in the longer second part of this book. He draws generously upon his own experiences, with composer Harvey Schmidt, in creating not only The Fantasticks but all their other shows. Together these musicals become a constant frame of reference as Jones explains how to get started, how to work with composers, set designers and other collaborators, how to find the spark for an effective lyric, how to create a musical rather than a play with music and how to go about getting produced.

From Trial by Jury to The Pirates of Penzance: the complete librettos of all fourteen Gilbert and Sullivan operas.

Gilbert's verses for Sullivan's music are the most fastidiously turned and inventively rhymed in all lyric comedy. As the Savoy Operas enter their second century on a swell of renewed popularity, Gilbert's reputation as the supreme wordsmith of light opera remains secure.

Complete and authentic, these are the librettos on which modern performances and recordings are based. Scattered among the songs are over seventy of the amusing, quirky pictures Gilbert drew to illustrate them. A chronology prepared for this edition sketches the authors' lives and careers. This is a book that no lover of Gilbert and Sullivan, musical comedy, or indeed the English theater will want to be without.

Carnival, charivari, mumming plays, peasant festivals, and even early versions of the Santa Claus myth - all of these forms of entertainment influenced and shaped blackface minstrelsy in the first half of the nineteenth century. In his fascinating study Demons of Disorder, musicologist Dale Cockrell studies issues of race and class by analysing their cultural expressions, and investigates the roots of still remembered songs such as 'Jim Crow', 'Zip Coon', and 'Dan Tucker'. Also examined is the character George Washington Dixon, the man most deserving of the title 'father of blackface minstrelsy' and surely one of celebrity's all-time heavyweight eccentrics - a bonafide 'demon of disorder'. The first book on the blackface tradition written by a leading musicologist, Demons of Disorder is an important achievement in music history and culture.

Carnival, charivari, mumming plays, peasant festivals, and even early versions of the Santa Claus myth--all of these forms of entertainment influenced and shaped blackface minstrelsy in the first half of the nineteenth century. In his fascinating study Demons of Disorder, musicologist Dale Cockrell studies issues of race and class by analyzing their cultural expressions, and investigates the roots of still-remembered songs such as "Jim Crow," "Zip Coon," and "Dan Tucker." The first book on the blackface tradition written by a leading musicologist, Demons of Disorder is an important achievement in music history and culture.

Most books on the American musical are little more than exercises in nostalgia. The specially commissioned essays that make up Approaches to the American Musical take a different view of the form. Going beyond the common assertion that musicals are simply escapist; these examinations of American stage and film musicals argue that Porgy and Bess, Top Hat, Kiss Me Kate and All That Jazz were popular precisely because they engaged with such important American issues as ethnicity, commerce and international relations.

(Applause Libretto Library). "Richly illustrated, it is ideal for fans of the show, as well as admirers of musical theatre." Variety * "Anybody who has seen the show (who hasn't?) should read the book" Entertainment Today * "The perfect present for any Fantasticks fans." Cleveland Plain Dealer * "A valuable resource. Recommended for all collections." Choice

Daniel Defoe's famous eighteenth-century novel about a girl born in Newgate Gaol: "Twelve Year a Whore, Five Times a Wife (whereof once to her own Brother), Twelve Year a Thief, Eight Year a Transported Felon in Virginia" who"at last grew Riche, liv'd in Honest and died a Penitent" is brought to the stage in this rumbustious musical written by Claire Luckham.4 women, 5 men

(Applause Books). David Merrick is the most astonishing showman of our time, and perhaps of all time. No other producer, not even Florenz Ziegfeld nor the combined lights of the Shubert brothers, has equalled his percentage of hits or his demonic flair for publicity. In this first-ever biography, Howard Kissel from his decade-long investigation reveals the man, the mask, and the myth of David Merrick. The charismatic and reclusive mogul emerges as a Broadway version of Howard Hughes, with his own panoply of eccentricities, genius and neuroses. Merrick's much publicized and oftentimes staged battles and feuds are re-ignited here full force with such major personalities as Barbra Streisand, Jackie Gleason, Ethel Merman, Lena Horne, Woody Allen, Peter Ustinov, Andy Griffith, Anthony Newley, Peter Brook, and Carol Channing. Over a hundred interviews with the major players in Merrick's drama from his pre-Merrick St. Louis childhood as David Margoulies to his latest divorce has yielded the first serious interrogation of a life that until now has been the sole creation of Merrick's own invention and press wizardry.