Everything is Choreography

Everything Is Choreography: The Musical Theater of Tommy Tune is the first full-scale analysis of the work of Tommy Tune, and his place in a lineage of Broadway’s great director-choreographers. The decade of the 1980s was considered a low point for the American musical. Tune’s predecessors in the art of complete musical staging like Jerome Robbins, Bob Fosse, Gower Champion, and Michael Bennett were either dead or withdrawn from the Broadway arena. Yet it was the period of Tune’s greatest success. The book examines how he adapted to an increasingly corporatized, high-stakes producing and funding environment. It considers how Tune kept the American musical a thriving, creative enterprise at a time when Broadway was dominated by British imports. It investigates Tune’s work since the mid-1990s, when he shifted his attentions to touring and regional productions, far from the glare of Broadway. Unlike his fellow director-choreographers, Tune also maintained a successful performing career, and the book details the deft balancing act that kept him working as a popular singer-dancer-actor while he was directing a series of striking and influential Broadway musicals.

Marcel Prawy und das erste Broadway-Musical im Österreich der Nachkriegszeit

Marcel Prawy, born in Vienna, graduated in law. In 1936, the couple Kiepura/Eggerth engaged him as private assistant. Two years later Jan Kiepura helped him to emigrate to New York. In 1943, after his employment ended, Prawy joined the US Army. Finally he returned as an elite soldier to Vienna and began his pioneering work for ‘Broadway Musicals’. In 1955, he was appointed dramaturge at the ‘Wiener Volksoper’. One year later in February, Kiss Me, Kate was performed in two Austrian theatres. The Viennese version was produced by Prawy himself and staged by Heinz Rosen. In Graz André Diehl directed the orchestration by conductor Rudolf Bibl on the basis of a piano score. Prawy relied on a mixture of Austrian theatre luminaries and American actors. In the Volksoper 183 performances took place – Graz had only 16. The reviews for the Viennese premiere reaffirmed the cheers. The criticism of the Graz production did not receive the same attention as Prawy’s production did.

Cary Grant, the Making of a Hollywood Legend

Archie Leach was a poorly educated, working-class boy from a troubled family living in the backstreets of Bristol. Cary Grant was Hollywood’s most debonair film star—the embodiment of worldly sophistication. Cary Grant: The Making of a Hollywood Legend tells the incredible story of how the sad, neglected boy became the suave, glamorous star. The first biography to be based on Grant’s own personal papers, the book takes the reader on a fascinating journey from his difficult childhood through years of struggle in music hall and vaudeville, a hit-and-miss career in Broadway musicals, and three decades of film stardom during Hollywood’s golden age. For the first time, the bitter realities of Grant’s impoverished childhood are revealed, including his mother’s mental illness and his expulsion from school at the age of fourteen. New light is shed on his trailblazing path as a film star who defied the studio system and took control of his own career. His genius as an actor and a filmmaker is highlighted through identifying the crucial contributions he made to classic films such as Bringing Up Baby (1938), The Philadelphia Story (1940), Notorious (1946), An Affair to Remember (1957), North by Northwest (1959), Charade (1963) and Father Goose (1964). His own search for happiness and fulfilment, which led him to having his first child at the age of sixty-two and embarking on his fifth marriage at the age of seventy-seven—is explored with new candor and insight. Cary Grant: The Making of a Hollywood Legend is the definitive account of the professional and personal life of an unforgettable star.

21st-Century Broadway Musicals and the ‘Best Musical’ Tony Award: Trends and Impact

Recent Broadway theatre seasons consistently saw record-breaking numbers of admissions and grosses, with musicals’ ticket sales making up 78–89% of annual Broadway grosses. The annual Tony Awards continue to serve as an influential theatre industry establishment that helps define a Broadway musical as exceptional and worthy of audiences, especially the awarding of the ‘Best Musical’ category (which can statistically have a profound impact on a production’s longevity). This article offers comprehensive surveying and discussions of significant components of a musical’s initial Broadway success in the 21st century. All 82 musicals that were nominated for or won the ‘Best Musical’ Tony Award between the years 2000 and 2019 are assessed for their source material and original Broadway run length. Subsequent discussions center on diversity and genres of musicals recognized by the Tony Awards, followed by conclusions and predictions of the COVID-19 pandemic’s impact on Broadway’s future and the influence of the ‘Best Musical’ Tony Award. The results of this study display observable patterns among the musicals surveyed, including screen (film/tv) being the most prominent source material and at least a 10–12 month run after the Tony Awards ceremonies for all ‘Best Musical’ winners.

The Junior Theatre Festival and Broadway Junior

Since 2003, more than four thousand middle school–aged children and their teachers and directors have gathered in Atlanta, Georgia, each January during Martin Luther King Jr. weekend to celebrate musical theatre at the Junior Theatre Festival (JTF). Produced by iTheatrics (the company that adapts Broadway musicals for kids), Playbill, and Music Theatre International, the convention features ninety school or community groups who present a fifteen-minute segment from a show that they rehearsed or performed at home for professional artist adjudicators’ immediate feedback. The weekend also includes performance workshops for kids and producing workshops for adults, a showcase of musical numbers from new shows, and an elaborate distribution of awards, during which almost every group is publicly recognized. Fueled by progressive language and democratic affirmations, JTF is unabashedly profit-driven, since MTI licenses the very repertoire of musicals that the children perform. The kids who attend JTF find affirmation and community in an intense, emotion-filled weekend that celebrates musical theatre. JTF combines crass commercialism and heartfelt outreach in a seamless, exuberant event.

Jock Whitney

The family of John Hay “Jock” Whitney, descendant of Mayflower traveler William Bradford, owned the fabulously successful Thoroughbred estate known as Greentree Stables, which he ran for much of his life. Greentree produced the superb champions Twenty Grand, Capot, and Tom Fool. Whitney was also successful in England with the great steeplechaser Easter Hero, two-time winner of the Cheltenham Gold Cup. An early backer of Fred Astaire’s Broadway musicals, Whitney was an inveterate “stage-door Johnny,” well known for his ability to pick up chorus girls after the show. He was also a keen filmgoer, an early investor in Technicolor, and the man who backed David O. Selznick’s productions of Gone with the Wind and Rebecca.Despite his financial largesse, business acumen, and cinematic insight, the self-effacing Whitney never received a single screen credit for any of the dozens of films he was involved in.