NY Public Library Exhibits Over 70 Tony-Winning Musicals

For Broadway's lyricists, composers, and orchestrators, the Tony Awards represent the highest honor that their colleagues can bestow. The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts delves into its renowned collections for Writing to Character: Songwriters & the Tony Awards, the first exhibition to explore the over 70 Broadway shows that have won Tonys for either Best Musical or Best Score.

In conjunction with the exhibition, the Library will also present a free public program series featuring appearances by such noted songwriters as Charles Strouse, Maury Yeston, and Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty. Writing to Character, co-presented by The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts and Tony Award Productions, is on view from February 26, 2008 through June 14, 2008 in the Library's Vincent Astor Gallery. Admission is free. The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center is located at 40 Lincoln Center Plaza.

Through annotated scores and scripts, correspondence, costume and set designs, photographs, window cards, and original cast recordings, Writing to Character explores the collaborative process of developing a Tony Award-winning musical. The exhibition also includes videotaped interviews with such musical theatre luminaries as Richard Rodgers, Stephen Sondheim, Harold Prince, Jerry Bock and Sheldon Harnick, John Kander and Fred Ebb, Jerry Herman, Lynn Ahrens, Stephen Flaherty, and Adam Guettel.

Special nuggets include the guitar on which Duncan Sheik first plucked the chords out for "Mama Who Bore Me" and then went on to write the first four songs he composed for Spring Awakening. In addition, there is the conductor's piano score, with an additional verse, for "Adelaide's Lament" from Guys and Dolls, and W.H. Auden's unused lyrics for "Song of the Quest" for Man from La Mancha.

Moving backwards from the award ceremony, the exhibition reveals the work of putting on a show – from the opening night performance back through rehearsals, orchestrations and arrangements, demos and money raising, writing the songs, and plotting out the show, all the way to the original concept.

Material is drawn from the archives of songwriters and their producer, designer, director, and performer colleagues in the Library for the Performing Arts' four research divisions: the Billy Rose Theatre Division, the Jerome Robbins Dance Division, the Music Division, and the Rodgers and Hammerstein Archives of Recorded Sound.

Artifacts include Jerry Bock's notes and revised outlines, as well as Zero Mostel's script for Fiddler on the Roof, and the stage manager's promptbook for South Pacific open to "Twin Soliloquies," with hand-written annotations. The development of a song can be seen in Frank Loesser's lyrics and music (lead sheet and score) showing the song "Organization Man," which eventually became "Company Way" in How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying. Among the items on loan from Jason Robert Brown is the draft of lyrics for "Ramblin' and Rollin'" from Parade. A presentation book from The Wiz, resembling a children's coloring book in bright, primary colors, is evidence of the creative ways adopted for fundraising. A 1963 issue of Seventeen Magazine helped the creators of Hairspray, "to get into the mood." There are scores, orchestrations, and lead sheets for The Lion King and Urinetown. Meanwhile, the design development of a show can be seen in Boris Aronson's set model for Company and in Jo Mielziner's letter to the Chief Clerk of the New York City Bureau of Sewers asking for photographs of underground sewers for the famous location in Guys and Dolls for "the oldest established, permanent, floating crap game in New York."

Writing to Character: Songwriters & the Tony Awards is curated by Barbara Cohen Stratyner, Judy R. and Alfred A. Rosenberg Curator of Exhibitions at The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, and John Johnson, Associate Producer of Tony Award Productions.

A series of five programs will focus on Tony Award-winning musicals. The programs, produced by Alan Pally, the Manager of Public Programs at the Library for the Performing Arts, will take place in the Library's Bruno Walter Auditorium. Admission to all programs is free and is on a first come, first served basis, except for the May 10 program. For May 10, free tickets will be distributed one per person, from 1:00 p.m. at the Library's Lincoln Center Plaza entrance.  For further information about public programs, telephone 212.642.0142 or go to the Library's website at www.nypl.org/lpaprograms.

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