Authors: Stuart Ostrow
ISBN-13: 9781557836465, ISBN-10: 1557836469
Format: Hardcover
Publisher: Applause Theatre Book Publishers
Date Published: December 2005
Edition: 1st Edition
"The best way I know to resuscitate the theatre is to produce dangerous new works." - Stuart Ostrow. Producer Stuart Ostrow's manifesto of how intelligent life might be restored to the theatre is also a unique personal memoir of the producer-creator relationship and an evaluation of the essentials that can make a show fly, or remain earthbound. As a solo producer, Ostrow's many productions include M. Butterfly, which won the Tony Award for Best Play; Pippin; and 1776, which received both the New York and London Drama Critics Awards as well as the Tony Award for Best Musical. He produced the original Broadway production of the critically acclaimed La Bete, which won the Olivier Award in London for Best Comedy. Ostrow was brought in to fix the original production of Chicago, collaborated with Anthony Hopkins on a London production of M. Butterfly, that was not meant to be, and even had his own play, Stages, directed on Broadway by the avant-garde theatrical pioneer Richard Foreman. He riffs about the heroes and heels he's met along the way and that great cast includes Frank Loesser, Meredith Willson, Mel Brooks, Mike Nichols, Bob Fosse, David Geffen, Andrew Lloyd Webber, David Henry Hwang, John Kander, Fred Ebb, and many more.
1 | Frank Loesser | 3 |
Guys and dolls | ||
The most happy fella | ||
How to succeed in business | ||
Without really trying | ||
2 | Matt Dubey and Harold Karr | 17 |
We take the town | ||
Mel Brooks | ||
All American | ||
The producers | ||
3 | Meredith Willson | 22 |
The music man | ||
The unsinkable Molly Brown | ||
Here's love | ||
4 | Jerry Bock and Sheldon Hernick | 30 |
Fiorello! | ||
She loves me | ||
Fiddler on the roof | ||
The apple tree | ||
5 | Sherman Edwards and Peter Stone | 41 |
1776 | ||
6 | Bob Dylan and Archibald Macleish | 58 |
Scratch | ||
7 | Stephen Schwartz and Roger O. Hirson | 63 |
Pippin | ||
8 | John Kander and Fred EBB | 73 |
Cabaret | ||
Chicago | ||
9 | Stuart Ostrow | 80 |
Stages | ||
10 | David Henry Hwang | 88 |
M. Butterfly | ||
11 | David Hirson | 99 |
La Bete | ||
12 | Ernest Lehman and Clifford Odets | 110 |
Sweet small of success | ||
13 | Alan Menken and Tom Eyen | 116 |
Kicks : the showgirl musical | ||
14 | The flamingo kid | 120 |
15 | The musical theatre lab | 123 |
16 | The producer's new clothes | 133 |
17 | Comes the revolution! | 138 |
18 | One more time | 141 |
Afterword : a place to begin again | 145 | |
Epilogue : "what is it about?" | 153 |