Harold Prince And The American Musical Theater

A complete look at the career of one of Broadway's most influential producer/directors. The elements of Prince's signature--his convention-challenging subject matter and use of music, the revitalizing theatricality of his production designs--are discussed in detail. Illustrated with photos from the hit shows which show his innovative concepts in decor and state movement.

"The story of Prince's career is inseparable from the history of the American musical theatre for the past 40 years...In-depth accounts of musicals Fiddler on the Roof, West Side Story, Cabaret, Company, and Sweeney Todd will be of interest to any musical theatre buff." -American Theatre

In this fast-moving, candid, conversational, and entertaining memoir, Harold Prince, the most honored director in the history of the American theater (22 Tony Awards and counting), looks back over his 70-year (and counting!) career. Featuring original material from Contradictions: Notes on Twenty-Six Years in the Theatre, Prince provides a fresh, new perspective on his writing from the vantage point of today. Sense of Occasion gives an insider's recollection of the making of such landmark musicals as West Side Story, Fiddler on the Roof, Cabaret, Company, Follies, Sweeney Todd, Evita, and Phantom of the Opera, with Prince's perceptive comments about his mentor George Abbott and his many celebrated collaborators, including Leonard Bernstein, Jerome Robbins, Stephen Sondheim, John Kander, Boris Aronson, Andrew Lloyd Webber, Angela Lansbury, Elizabeth Taylor, Zero Mostel, Carol Burnett, and Joel Grey. As well as detailing his titanic successes that changed the form and content of the American musical theater, Prince even-handedly reflects on the shows that didn't work, most memorably and painfully Merrily We Roll Along. Throughout, he offers insights into the way business is conducted on Broadway, drawing sharp contrasts between past and present. This thoughtful, complete account of one of the most legendary and long-lived careers in theater history, written by the man who lived it, is an essential work of personal and professional recollection.

From the diverse proto-theatres of the mid-1800s, though the revues of the ‘20s, the ‘true musicals’ of the ‘40s, the politicisation of the ‘60s and the ‘mega-musicals’ of the ‘80s, every era in American musical theatre reflected a unique set of socio-cultural factors. Nathan Hurwitz uses these factors to explain the output of each decade in turn, showing how the most popular productions spoke directly to the audiences of the time. He explores the function of musical theatre as commerce, tying each big success to the social and economic realities in which it flourished. This study spans from the earliest spectacles and minstrel shows to contemporary musicals such as Avenue Q and Spiderman. It traces the trends of this most commercial of art forms from the perspective of its audiences, explaining how staying in touch with writers and producers strove to stay in touch with these changing moods. Each chapter deals with a specific decade, introducing the main players, the key productions and the major developments in musical theatre during that period.

This volume is a contribution to the aesthetics of the «new musical», which has developed into a high art form over the last thirty years. The decisive breakthrough occurred with Bernstein's West Side Story in 1957. It was the producer of this show, Harold Prince, whose subsequent epoch-making directorial and conceptual work created the basis on which the individual work of Kander, Sondheim and Lloyd Webber reached a unified level of the highest quality. The «new musical» and its creator Harold Prince were the subjects of a symposium held at the Neuköllner Oper in Berlin a few days after the World Premiere of Bounce in the presence of the Broadway Master. Contributors were academics and theatre practitioners offering a double perspective modeled on the outstanding example of the collaboration set by Foster Hirsch and Harold Prince.

From the diverse proto-theatres of the mid-1800s, though the revues of the ‘20s, the ‘true musicals’ of the ‘40s, the politicisation of the ‘60s and the ‘mega-musicals’ of the ‘80s, every era in American musical theatre reflected a unique set of socio-cultural factors. Nathan Hurwitz uses these factors to explain the output of each decade in turn, showing how the most popular productions spoke directly to the audiences of the time. He explores the function of musical theatre as commerce, tying each big success to the social and economic realities in which it flourished. This study spans from the earliest spectacles and minstrel shows to contemporary musicals such as Avenue Q and Spiderman. It traces the trends of this most commercial of art forms from the perspective of its audiences, explaining how staying in touch with writers and producers strove to stay in touch with these changing moods. Each chapter deals with a specific decade, introducing the main players, the key productions and the major developments in musical theatre during that period.

"...The book succeeds due to its comprehensiveness and useful cross-referencing....There is a wealth of information here." Library Journal

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.