Routledge Guide to Broadway

Routledge Guide to Broadway
Author: Ken Bloom
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 302
Release: 2013-10-18
Genre: Music
ISBN: 1135871167

The Routledge Guide to Broadway is the second title in our new student reference series. It will introduce the student to the Broadway theater, focusing on key performers, writers, directors, plays, and musicals, along with the theaters themselves, key awards, and the folklore of Broadway. Broadway is the center of American theater, where all the great plays and musicals make their mark. Students across the country in theater history, performance, and direction/production look to Broadway for their inspiration. While there are illustrated coffee table type books on Broadway, there are few that offer a comprehensive look at the key figures and productions of the last two centuries. The Routledge Guide to Broadway offers this information in an easy-to-use, inexpensive format that will appeal to students, professors, and theatrical professionals.

The Routledge Companion to the Contemporary Musical

The Routledge Companion to the Contemporary Musical
Author: Taylor & Francis Group
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 496
Release: 2021-12-13
Genre:
ISBN: 9781032240541

The Routledge Companion to the Contemporary Musical is dedicated to the musical's evolving relationship to American culture in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. In the past decade-and-a-half, international scholars from an ever-widening number of disciplines and specializations have been actively contributing to the interdisciplinary field of musical theater studies. Musicals have served not only to mirror the sociopolitical, economic, and cultural tenor of the times, but have helped shape and influence it, in America and across the globe: a genre that may seem, at first glance, light-hearted and escapist serves also as a bold commentary on society. Forty-four essays examine the contemporary musical as an ever-shifting product of an ever-changing culture. This volume sheds new light on the American musical as a thriving, contemporary performing arts genre, one that could have died out in the post-Tin Pan Alley era but instead has managed to remain culturally viable and influential, in part by newly embracing a series of complex contradictions. At present, the American musical is a live, localized, old-fashioned genre that has simultaneously developed into an increasingly globalized, tech-savvy, intensely mediated mass entertainment form. Similarly, as it has become increasingly international in its scope and appeal, the stage musical has also become more firmly rooted to Broadway--the idea, if not the place--and thus branded as a quintessentially American entertainment.

The Routledge Companion to African American Theatre and Performance

The Routledge Companion to African American Theatre and Performance
Author: Kathy A. Perkins
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 566
Release: 2018-12-07
Genre: Drama
ISBN: 1351751433

The Routledge Companion to African American Theatre and Performance is an outstanding collection of specially written essays that charts the emergence, development, and diversity of African American Theatre and Performance—from the nineteenth-century African Grove Theatre to Afrofuturism. Alongside chapters from scholars are contributions from theatre makers, including producers, theatre managers, choreographers, directors, designers, and critics. This ambitious Companion includes: A "Timeline of African American theatre and performance." Part I "Seeing ourselves onstage" explores the important experience of Black theatrical self-representation. Analyses of diverse topics including historical dramas, Broadway musicals, and experimental theatre allow readers to discover expansive articulations of Blackness. Part II "Institution building" highlights institutions that have nurtured Black people both on stage and behind the scenes. Topics include Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), festivals, and black actor training. Part III "Theatre and social change" surveys key moments when Black people harnessed the power of theatre to affirm community realities and posit new representations for themselves and the nation as a whole. Topics include Du Bois and African Muslims, women of the Black Arts Movement, Afro-Latinx theatre, youth theatre, and operatic sustenance for an Afro future. Part IV "Expanding the traditional stage" examines Black performance traditions that privilege Black worldviews, sense-making, rituals, and innovation in everyday life. This section explores performances that prefer the space of the kitchen, classroom, club, or field. This book engages a wide audience of scholars, students, and theatre practitioners with its unprecedented breadth. More than anything, these invaluable insights not only offer a window onto the processes of producing work, but also the labour and economic issues that have shaped and enabled African American theatre. Chapter 20 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.

West Side Story, Gypsy, and the Art of Broadway Orchestration

West Side Story, Gypsy, and the Art of Broadway Orchestration
Author: Paul Laird
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 184
Release: 2021-11-18
Genre: Music
ISBN: 0429662734

In this ground-breaking study, Paul Laird examines the process and effect of orchestration in West Side Story and Gypsy, two musicals that were among the most significant Broadway shows of the 1950s, and remain important in the modern repertory. Drawing on extensive archival research with original manuscripts, Laird provides a detailed account of the process of orchestration for these musicals, and their context in the history of Broadway orchestration. He argues that the orchestration plays a vital role in the characterization and plot development in each major musical number, opening a new avenue for analysis that deepens our understanding of the musical as an art form. The orchestration of the score in Broadway musicals deeply shapes their final soundscapes, but only recently has it begun to receive real attention. Linked by a shared orchestrator, in other ways West Side Story and Gypsy offer a study in contrasts. Breaking down how the two composers, Leonard Bernstein and Jules Styne, collaborated with orchestrators Sid Ramin, Irwin Kostal, and Robert Ginzler, Laird’s study enables us to better understand both of these two iconic shows, and the importance of orchestration within musical theatre in general.

In the Long Run

In the Long Run
Author: Jordan Schildcrout
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2020
Genre: American drama
ISBN: 9780367210892

1910s -- 1920s -- 1930s -- 1940s -- 1950s -- 1960s -- 1970s -- 1980s -- 1990-2018.

Directing in Musical Theatre

Directing in Musical Theatre
Author: Joe Deer
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 217
Release: 2014-01-10
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 1136246703

This comprehensive guide, from the author of Acting in Musical Theatre, will equip aspiring directors with all of the skills that they will need in order to guide a production from beginning to end. From the very first conception and collaborations with crew and cast, through rehearsals and technical production all the way to the final performance, Joe Deer covers the full range. Deer’s accessible and compellingly practical approach uses proven, repeatable methods for addressing all aspects of a production. The focus at every stage is on working with others, using insights from experienced, successful directors to tackle common problems and devise solutions. Each section uses the same structure, to stimulate creative thinking: Timetables: detailed instructions on what to do and when, to provide a flexible organization template Prompts and Investigations: addressing conceptual questions about style, characterization and design Skills Workshops: Exercises and ‘how-to’ guides to essential skills Essential Forms and Formats: Including staging notation, script annotation and rehearsal checklists Case Studies: Well-known productions show how to apply each chapter’s ideas Directing in Musical Theatre not only provides all of the essential skills, but explains when and how to put them to use; how to think like a director.

Stage Management

Stage Management
Author: Lawrence Stern
Publisher: CRC Press
Total Pages: 419
Release: 2015-09-04
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 1317343905

Revered as the authoritative resource for stage management, this text offers students a practical manual on how to stage manage in all theater environments. Rich with practical resources — checklists, diagrams, examples, forms and step-by-step directions — Stage Management eschews excessive discussion of philosophy and gets right to the essential materials and processes of putting on a production. In addition to sharing his own expertise, Stern has gathered practical advice from working stage managers of Broadway, off-Broadway, touring companies, regional, community, and 99-seat Equity waiver theaters.

The Cambridge Companion to the Musical

The Cambridge Companion to the Musical
Author: William A. Everett
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 503
Release: 2017-09-21
Genre: Music
ISBN: 1107114748

An expanded and updated edition of this acclaimed, wide-ranging survey of musical theatre in New York, London, and elsewhere.

Illustrated Theatre Production Guide

Illustrated Theatre Production Guide
Author: Emeritus Professor of Enjglish John Holloway
Publisher: CRC Press
Total Pages: 417
Release: 2013-03-20
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 1136082867

Completely expanded and remodeled new edition of this unique look at theatrical scenery construction.

Costume in Motion

Costume in Motion
Author: Shura Pollatsek
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 218
Release: 2021-05-26
Genre: Design
ISBN: 1351258508

Costume in Motion is a guide to all stages of the collaboration process between costume designers and choreographers, documenting a wide range of approaches to the creation of a dance piece. Featuring interviews with a diverse selection of over 40 choreographers and designers, in-depth case studies of works by leading dance companies, and stunning original photography, the book explores the particular challenges and creative opportunities of designing for the body in motion. Filled with examples of successful collaborations in contemporary and modern dance, as well as a wide range of other styles, Costume in Motion provides costume designers and choreographers with a greater understanding of the field from the other’s perspective. The book is designed to be part of the curriculum for an undergraduate or graduate level course in costume design or choreography, and it can also be an enriching read for artists at any stage of their careers wishing to hone their collaboration skills in dance.