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The Oxford Companion to the American Musical: Theatre, Film, and Television
(2/1/2008) From the silver screen to the Great White Way, small community theatres to television sets, the musical has long held a special place in America's heart and history. Now, in The Oxford Companion to the American Musical, readers who flocked to the movies to see An American in Paris or Chicago, lined up for tickets to West Side Story or Rent, or crowded around their TVs to watch Cinderella or High School Musical can finally turn to a single book for details about them all. For the first time, this... |
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Theatre World Volume 64, 2007-2008
(1/1/2008) Celebrating its 64th year, Theatre World remains the definitive annual record of the American theatre season - the most complete record of the Broadway, Off-Broadway, Off-Off-Broadway, and regional theatre season. Volume 64 features Harvey Fierstein's A Catered Affair, starring Faith Prince, and Tracy Lett's moving August: Osage County, the latter part of a strong season for original dramas on Broadway. It was a season also rife with stellar revivals, including Sunday in the Park with George; So... |
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The Cambridge Companion to the Musical
(1/1/2008) Tracing the development of the musical on both Broadway and in London's West End, this updated Companion continues to provide a broad and thorough overview of one of the liveliest and most popular forms of musical performance. Ordered chronologically, essays cover from the American musical of the nineteenth century through to the most recent productions, and the book also includes key information on singers, audience, critical reception, and traditions. All of the chapters from the first edition... |
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The Cambridge Companion to August Wilson
(3/1/2007) One of America's most powerful and original dramatists, August Wilson offered an alternative history of the twentieth century, as seen from the perspective of black Americans. He celebrated the lives of those seemingly pushed to the margins of national life, but who were simultaneously protagonists of their own drama and evidence of a vital and compelling community. Decade by decade, he told the story of a people with a distinctive history who forged their own future, aware of their roots in an... |
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The World of Theatre: Tradition and Innovation
(11/29/2005) The World of Theatre is the first introduction to theatre book to truly focus on diversity and globalism, integrating coverage of multicultural, international and experimental theatre throughout. Theatre is presented as a global and multicultural form that reflects both traditional and evolving world views. While the American commercial theatre and European forms are central to the text, alternative theatres are placed side by side for comparison and contrast in each chapter, thus avoiding the s... |
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Theatre and Travel: Tours of the South
(3/2/2005) Presents rare information on traveling circus, minstrel, opera, and Toby shows. This collection of essays explores an understudied but pervasive aspect of American theatre: theatre on the road, from minstrel shows and Toby shows to contemporary African American theatre, 19th-century circus rail travel, and small-town opera houses. The challenges in gathering and compiling data on these ephemeral productions, from such far-flung sources as railroad schedules and weather reports, minutes f... |
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New York Then/New York Now
(2/21/2005) New York Then/New York Now—a collection of essays, memoirs, interviews, commentary, and plays—contemplates New York City’s history and future as a center for groundbreaking theatrical forms and ideas. Featuring the work of theater artists, producers, and critics, this special issue of Theater is concerned with the ideas and practicalities of making theater in and for New York within specific historical, political, and economic contexts. The first section, “New York Then,” reflects on ... |
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The Complete Annotated Gilbert & Sullivan
(1/1/2005) Lovers of Gilbert and Sullivan will be in heaven with the publication of these two books, which nicely complement each other. Stedman (English, Roosevelt Univ., Chicago) offers an outstanding study of this playwright and his often overlooked works, with much of its value deriving from its study of Gilbert without Sullivan. The author is a recognized expert on Gilbert as well as the Victorian time period, and she shows him to be a complex and interesting man who often found himself at odds with ... |
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The Cambridge Companion to David Mamet
(1/1/2004) This collection of specially written essays offers both student and theatregoer a guide to one of the most celebrated American dramatists working today. Readers will find the general and accessible descriptions and analyses provide the perfect introduction to Mamet's work. The volume covers the full range of Mamet's writing, including now classic plays such as American Buffalo and Glengarry Glen Ross, and his more recent work, Boston Marriage, among others, as well as his films, such as The Ver... |
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Golda's Balcony: A Play
(11/21/2003) The sold out off-Broadway smash has moved to Broadway! The rise of Golda Meir from impoverished Russian schoolgirl to Prime Minister of Israel is one of the most amazing stories of the 20th century. Now her life has been transformed into a one-woman play of overwhelming power and triumph by William Gibson, author of The Miracle Worker. Golda's Balcony earned actress Tovah Feldshuh a 2003 Drama Desk award."Enlightening ... Now, hearing from someone who was there at the birth of the country, who ... |
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The Wadsworth Anthology of Drama
(6/25/2003) Known through three editions as the boldest and most distinguished introduction to drama, William Worthen's pace-setting text continues to provide exciting plays usefully situated within their historical and cultural contexts. |
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The Lyrics of Noel Coward
(1/1/2002) Mad Dogs and Englishmen, Don't Put your Daughter on the Stage, Mrs Worthington and over 250 more lyrics from Coward's musical masterpieces. Noel Coward is one of the greatest lyricists of the twentieth century. Songs such as A Room with a View, The Stately Homes of England, Mad Dogs and Englishmen and Mrs Worthington are known, sung and loved the world over. This edition gathers together over 250 of Coward's lyrics, arranged in chronological order and grouped by show. In addition, these masterp... |
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Theatre World 1994-1995, Vol. 51
(1/1/2000) Theatre World, the statistical and pictorial record of the Broadway and off-Broadway season, touring companies, and professional regional companies throughout the United States, has become a classic in its field. The book is complete with cast listings, replacement producers, directors, authors, composers, opening and closing dates, song titles, and much, much more. There are special sections with biographical data, obituary information, listings of annual Shakespeare festivals and major drama a... |
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Theatre World 1993-1994, Vol. 50
(1/1/2000) Theatre World, the statistical and pictorial record of the Broadway and off-Broadway season, touring companies, and professional regional companies throughout the United States, has become a classic in its field. The book is complete with cast listings, replacement producers, directors, authors, composers, opening and closing dates, song titles, and much, much more. There are special sections with biographical data, obituary information, listings of annual Shakespeare festivals and major drama a... |
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The Social Significance of Modern Drama
(1/1/2000) Out of print virtually since its completion in 1914, Emma Goldman's pioneer work Social Significance in Modern Drama bridges modern drama and political philosophy, pointing out the road that remains to be travelled toward a theatre of social empowerment. Activist, feminist, philosopher and anarchist, Emma Goldman was a passionate thinker about all things modern when the 20th century was still raw and new. The emergence of her treatise on the theatre after years of obscurity is certain to arouse ... |
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Polaroid Stories
(1/1/1999) Naomi Iizuka’s 1997 play, Polaroid Stories, consciously uses stories, characters and themes from Ovid’s Metamorphoses to tell the stories of street kids living on the edge in a desolate, urban landscape. Because these characters are named after Orpheus and Eurydice, and Echo and Narcissus, or based on stories of Dionysus, and Ariadne and Theseus, and because scenes are entitled “The Story of Semele” or “Theseus in the Labyrinth,” Iizuka creates a world that has two dimensions: the g... |
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Incongruous Entertainment: Camp, Cultural Value, and the MGM Musical
(2005) With their lavish costumes and sets, ebullient song and dance numbers, and iconic movie stars, the musicals that mgm produced in the 1940s seem today to epitomize camp. Yet they were originally made to appeal to broad, mainstream audiences. In this lively, nuanced, and provocative reassessment of the mgm musical, Steven Cohan argues that this seeming incongruity—between the camp value and popular appreciation of these musicals—is not as contradictory as it seems. He demonstrates that the fi... |
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A Beautiful Pageant: African American Theatre, Drama, and Performance in the Harlem Renaissance, 1910-1927
(2002) The Harlem Renaissance, from 1910 to 1927, was the time when Harlem came alive with theater, drama, sports, dance, and politics. Looking at events as diverse as the prizefight between Jack Johnson and Jim “White Hope” Jeffries, the choreography of Aida Walker and Ethel Waters, the writing of Zora Neale Hurston and the musicals of the period, Krasner paints a vibrant portrait of those years. This was the time when the residents of northern Manhattan were leading their downtown counterparts at... |
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More Broadway Musicals: Since 1980
(1991) In the decade since Abrams published the bestsellingBroadway Musicals, some of Broadway's biggest all-time hits have appeared--Cats, 42nd Street, Phantom of the Opera, Les Miserables--and set new standards, begun new trends, and entranced new audiences. More Broadway Musicals presents the stories behind the major productions in this fascinating volume sure to delight those who have seen the shows, as well we those who know them only through recordings. 200 illustrations, 75 in full color. |
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Alice May: Gilbert & Sullivan's First Prima Donna
(2003) Alice May is the archetype of the Gilbert and Sullivan prima donna. She ran away with her music teacher as a girl and landed in Australia, becoming that country's leading comic opera singer. As the head of her own company she toured Australia and New Zealand, eventually making her way to Britain via India, where she entered into successful partnerships and productions. Before she drank down the last of her last days in St. Louis--minus the music teacher--she had traveled oceans and brought down ... |
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Broadway Musicals
(1986) A colorful tribute to the great Broadway shows of our time. 395 illustrations, 112 in full color. |
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A Chronology of American Musical Theater
(2002) With an introductory chapter discussing the very earliest productions—The Beggar's Opera (1750), The Archers (1796), Tom and Jerry (1823), and The Bohemian Girl (1844)—A Chronology of American Musical Theater offers in-depth coverage of Broadway musicals from 1850-2001. The book's entries span more than 5,000 shows, including not only "book musicals" but also revivals, revues, burlesques, operettas, farce comedies, comic operas, ice skating shows, rock operas, and other musical spectacles th... |
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Flower Drum Songs: The Story Of Two Musicals
(2006) The return to New York in 2002 of Rodgers and Hammerstein's Flower Drum Song-with a totally new book by playwright David Henry Hwang-was considered the most revolutionary chapter in the history of Broadway revivals. Why? The musical, a clear hit when it was originally produced in 1958, had later acquired a debatable reputation for quaint, racially offensive Asian stereotypes. Yet Hwang's controversial rewrite-driven at least in part by concerns about such offenses-was a box-office failure. Dr... |
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More Opening Nights on Broadway: A Critical Quote Book of the Musical Theatre, 1965-1981
(1997) This follow-up to Steven Suskin's 1990 volume (which covered 1943-64) is packed with juicy quotes from the reviews of every Broadway musical that opened between 1965 and 1981. That said, forget the reviews. The real reason to get this book is for the dirt Suskin has dug up on every show including the flops--especially the flops. Accompanying the statistical data on creative personnel, number of performances and profitability status, he dutifully and delightedly records the backstage fits, fights... |
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With an air debonair: Musical theatre in American 1785-1815
(1991) Even before reading this record, one is struck by the beautiful layout and clarity of reproductions found within. This most comprehensive piece of research fills a scholarly gap on the early history of musical theater in the United States. Not just a chronicler of musical theater, Porter (music history, Ohio State Univ.) provides fascinating information on all aspects of 18th-and 19th-century musical production: personnel, technical effects, musical composition, and orchestra. In addition to the... |
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Broadway!: 125 Years of Musical Theatre
(1991) Offers an illustrated survey of American musicals from "The Black Crook" in 1886 to 1991's "Miss Saigon," detailing the stars, sets, and designs. |
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Snow White: A Guide to Child Centered Musical Theatre
(1997) A beautiful book providing everything needed to teach and direct a children's production of Snow White. Included are the story, a play version, a musical score, production notes, and a compact disk for the actual performance. No parts or extra copies are needed! The story is a simplified adaptation of Grimm's fairy tale, presented with exquisite color ink drawings of actual children who have performed the play. The story is accompanied by a glossary defining the more difficult words, and sugges... |
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The Musical Theatre Cookbook: Recipes from Best-Loved Musicals
(1994) This delicious 196-page book brings you The Devil's Hot Dog from "Damn Yankees", "Enchiladas from "Bye Bye Birdie", A Seaside Clambake from "Carousel", Mrs. Lovett's Meat Pies from Sweeney Todd (with a suggested substitute for the main ingredient!) and Strawberry Tarts from "My Fair Lady". You'll also find roast beef from "Fiorello", Fiddleferns from "Into the Woods", Splashing Dressing Salad from "Guys and Dolls", Sweet Pertater Pie from "Oklahoma!", Sandy's Candies from "Brigadoon", and mu... |
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Harry B. Smith: Dean of American Librettists
(2003) Harry B. Smith was the most prolific writer of librettos for the American musical theatre in history, with nearly half of his 300 works actually opening in New York City. In addition, Smith was instrumental in adapting and popularizing foreign musicals in America, significantly influencing writing and composing styles of American shows. He worked with every major composer in America between 1880 and 1920, and consequently this examination of his work and process is highly instructive of the hist... |
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David Braham: The American Offenbach
(2002) David Braham (1838-1905) was the musical director for the famous vaudeville team of Harrigan and Hart, writing music for many of their comic songs, including "The Mulligan Guards,'Sallie Waters,'Paddie Duffy's Cart," and many more. His long career as a theatrical composer in New York helped establish a new style of Broadway musical. He came from a family well-entrenched in the music and theater worlds, and his story touches upon nearly all aspects of the history of American musical theater and b... |
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Opera--Dead or Alive: Production, Performance and Enjoyment of Musical Theatre
(1972) Playwright, director, and critic Ronald E. Mitchell offers general readers a richer understanding of traditions, terms, styles, and staging techniques of musical theater, including an introduction to seventeen examples of operas and musicals, from baroque and romantic operas to Gilbert & Sullivan, from proletarian dramas to Broadway shows like Oklahoma. |
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Ganzl's Book of the Musical Theatre
(1989) The worldwide proliferation of musical theater makes its documentation in a single volume impossible, but Ganzl's Book of Musical Theatre is a most impressive selection from this wealth of material. Companion to the respected Gustav Kobbe's Complete Opera Book (Putnam, 1954; Amer. Biog. Serv., 1987; reprint of 1963 ed.), whose form it follows, it offers information on some 300 musicals from the current world repertoire and many important works that are no longer performed. Each entry includes a... |
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Extravaganza King: Robert Barnet and Boston Musical Theater
(2004) This is the entertaining tale of Robert Barnet (1853–1933), a prosperous Boston sugar merchant, and the enormously popular musical theatricals he wrote and produced for the First Corps of Cadets, a volunteer militia of young upper-class Boston businessmen who sought money to build an armory as protection against feared immigrant uprisings. Barnet had already made a name for himself in local amateur theater circles when the Corps hired the middle-aged father of five to stage fund-raisers to er... |
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Gower Champion: Dance and American Musical Theatre
(1999) 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 analys... |
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Singing for Musicals: A Practical Guide
(2008) Perfect for drama students, choir leaders, and aspiring singers, this insightful handbook provides insight into every aspect of performing in musical theater. Hints are provided for singers on developing vocal techniques, preparing songs for both audition and performance, and exploring character within song. Warm-up exercises for groups and individuals are also included along with advice on releasing tension from the body and voice; training methods for improving posture; and a listing of vario... |
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Producing Musicals: A Practical Guide
(2004) The principles and procedures described in this book can be applied to shows of any size and complexity, from one–off cabaret entertainments to large–scale, multi–media extravaganzas. An invaluable companion for both first–time and experienced producers, directors, and designers, it covers such topics as: the key roles of producer, director, creative team, and staging departments; suggested approaches for producing, directing, designing, and casting shows; a breakdown of the rehearsal pr... |
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Historical Dictionary of the Broadway Musical
(2007) This title in the Historical Dictionaries of Literature and the Arts series provides a wealth of information on musical Broadway. A chronology covers from 1866—when The Black Crook, one of the first important Broadway musicals, opened—to 2006. This is followed by an introduction that describes the evolution of the form. The main part of the dictionary consists of nearly 1,000 entries arranged alphabetically by person, show title, or subject, from Aarons, Alexander (a producer who worked wit... |
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150 Years of Popular Musical Theatre
(2001) Both informed and engaging, 150 Years of Popular Musical Theatre by British musicologist Andrew Lamb traces the development of modern musical theater from its beginnings in Paris roughly a century and a half ago to productions seen today on Broadway, in New York's East Village and the West End of London. Lamb contends that the dawn of the Industrial Revolution brought an increase in the uneducated working population to urban centers where the demand for "less sophisticated, more accessible thea... |
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The New American Musical: An Anthology from the End of the 20th Century
(2003) During the 1990's, a new generation of composers, lyricists and librettists emerged radically changing the face of American musical theatre. With Broadway becoming mostly a museum for revivals and Disney blockbusters, these new artists have fashioned a more highly personal and challenging form of musical theatre less interested in pure entertainment and the creation of diversions. Their work bears the influence of composers like Stephen Sondheim, Kurt Weill, Mark Blitzstein and Leonard Bernstein... |
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Broadway Babies: The People Who Made the American Musical
(1988) Vividly recreating the unique pleasure of experiencing a song-and-dance show, Broadway Babies spotlights the men and women who made a difference in the development of American musical comedy. Mordden's account features such show people as Florenz Ziegfeld, Harold Prince, Bert Lahr, Gwen Verdon, Angela Lansbury, Victor Herbert, Liza Minnelli, and Stephen Sondheim, and such musicals as Sally, Oh Kay!, Anything Goes, Show Boat, Oklahoma!, Follies, Chicago, and countless others. While theatrical h... |
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Encyclopedia of the Musical Theatre
(1994) For those familiar with Ganzl's Book of the Musical Theatre (LJ 4/15/89) or The British Musical Theatre (Oxford Univ. Pr., 1987), this is a much-anticipated work. Ganzl has admittedly (and wisely) avoided attempting a comprehensive study; there are, for instance, entries for operettas but not operas. Originally intended as a single volume, this two-volume set includes nearly 3000 articles on the most productive people and the most produced works throughout most of the world for the last 150 yea... |
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The American Musical Theatre: A Complete Musical Theatre Course
(1997) A Complete Musical Theatre Course |
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Broadway Stories: A Backstage Journey Through Musical Theatre
(1993) This treasure trove presents focused narratives by men and women (one as young as 12 years old) who have made the Broadway musical theater their home. Sixteen chapters chronicle the hits and misses inherent to the musical stage, recounted by an actor or member of the creative team. With his "fly-on-the-wall" perspective, author Bell clearly captures the thespians' love for their work and respect for the musical theater tradition. Not a retrospective, this volume discusses musicals from the recen... |
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No Legs, No Jokes, No Chance
(2008) Written by one of American theater's most avid and knowledgeable proponents, No Legs, No Jokes, No Chance traces the American musical from its rich and varied beginnings in European opera, American minstrel shows, and vaudeville through its many permutations to its current state--from, as Sheldon Patinkin puts it, La Boheme to Rent. Minstrelsy, burlesque, revue, dance, and choreographers, the of musical theater so often overlooked by its historians, finally receive due consideration in this thor... |
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Stage It with Music: An Encyclopedic Guide to the American Musical Theatre
(1993) A one-stop, up-to-date source for information on the history of the American musical theatre, Stage It with Music packs an astonishing quantity and variety of facts as well as insights and anecdotes into a convenient dictionary format. Coverage extends from the genre's nineteenth century beginnings to the present day, from The Black Crook (1866) to Jelly's Last Jam (1992). Included are entries on over 300 individual shows, musical series, performers, composers, lyricists, librettists, directors,... |
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The Melody Lingers on: The Great Songwriters and Their Movie Musicals
(1999) Back in print in a handsome, elegant paperback. "An outstanding, accurate and joyful exploration of the work of the great songwriters for Hollywood's great musicals! . . . I love this book", Michael Feinstein. This unique book that is a perfect gift and an asset to every film and music library. 162 photos. Filmography, bibliography, index, discography. |
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Leslie Stuart: Composer of Florodora
(2002) Leslie Stuart (1864-1928) was a British songwriter best remembered as the composer of the hit show, Florodora. He began writing popular songs as a teenager, first for blackface and vaudeville performers, and eventually for more "legitimate" shows and revues. Florodora (1899), written in collaboration with London's most fashionable librettist, Owen Hall, was a musical-comedy sensation. Its combination of the traditional slow love ballads and waltzes with more rhythmic and long-lined numbers made... |
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The New York Musicals of Comden and Green
(2000) The long-running partnership of Betty Comden and Adolph Green is certainly the most remarkable example of tenacious teamwork in the annals of the musical stage. As librettists, lyricists, and performers, they have been working together for nearly six decades and are still going strong. The New York Musicals of Comden and Green brings together three of their greatest Broadway triumphs: On the Town (1944) and Wonderful Town (1953), with music by Leonard Bernstein, and Bells are Ringing (1956), wi... |
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Hey Mr. Producer! the Musical World of Cameron Mackintosh
(1998) Sir Cameron Mackintosh ... is the most successful producer in the entire history of the stage musical, on Broadway, on London's West End, and in other theater capitals. He has been responsible for an amazing succession of hits, including Cats, Les Miserables, The Phantom of the Opera, and Miss Saigon. This book is the first ever to tell the story of the man behind so many of the triumphs of the contemporary musical stage. The authors, who have known Mackintosh since his earliest days in the thea... |
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Staging Musicals For Young Performers
(2004) A step-by-step guidebook for producing a successful show with young performers. An invaluable guide for teaching, acting, singing and dancing. Comprehensive text with charts, forms and photographs. |
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