Art Isn't Easy

Author: Joanne Gordon
Publisher: Da Capo Press
ISBN: 0786748249
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 382

Book Description
The musical theatre of Stephen Sondheim probes deeply into the most disturbing issues of contemporary life. By challenging his audience with intricate music, biting wit, and profound themes, he flouts the traditional wisdom of the musical theatre. Tracing Sondheim's career from his initial success as lyricist for "West Side Story" and "Gypsy" to his most recent work - "Into the Woods" and "Assassins" - Joanne Gordon emphasizes not only the disturbing content of Sondheim's work, but his innovative use of form. In shows such as "A Little Night Music", "Sweeney Todd", and "Sunday in the Park with George", Sondheim's music and lyrics are inextricably woven into the fabric of the entire work.

Sunday in the Park with George

Author:
Publisher: Hal Leonard Corporation
ISBN: 9781557830685
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 228

Book Description
(Applause Libretto Library). This 1995 Pulitzer Prize-winning musical was inspired by the painting A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte by Georges Seurat. A complex work revolving around a fictionalized Seurat immersed in single-minded concentration while painting the masterpiece, the production has evolved into a meditation on art, emotional connection, and community. This publication contains the entire script of the musical. " Sunday is itself a modernist creation, perhaps the first truly modernist work of musical theatre that Broadway has produced ... a watershed event that demands nothing less than a retrospective, even revisionist, look at the development of the serious Broadway musical." Frank Rich, The New York Times Magazine

Look, I Made a Hat

Author: Stephen Sondheim
Publisher: Knopf
ISBN: 030759341X
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 481

Book Description
The second volume of Sondheim's collected lyrics is both a remarkable glimpse into the brilliant mind of a legend, and a continuation of the acclaimed and best-selling Finishing the Hat. Picking up where he left off in Finishing the Hat, Sondheim gives us all the lyrics, along with excluded songs and early drafts, of the Pulitzer Prize–winning Sunday in the Park with George, Into the Woods, Assassins and Passion. Here, too, is an in-depth look at the evolution of Wise Guys, which subsequently was transformed into Bounce and eventually became Road Show. Sondheim takes us through his contributions to both television and film, some of which may surprise you, and covers plenty of never-before-seen material from unproduced projects as well. There are abundant anecdotes about his many collaborations, and readers are treated to rare personal material in this volume, as Sondheim includes songs culled from commissions, parodies and personal special occasions—such as a hilarious song for Leonard Bernstein’s seventieth birthday. As he did in the previous volume, Sondheim richly annotates his lyrics with invaluable advice on songwriting, discussions of theater history and the state of the industry today, and exacting dissections of his work, both the successes and the failures. Filled with even more behind-the-scenes photographs and illustrations from Sondheim’s original manuscripts, Look, I Made a Hat is fascinating, devourable and essential reading for any fan of the theater or this great man’s work.

The Oxford Handbook of Sondheim Studies

Author: Robert Gordon
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 019990927X
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 517

Book Description
The Oxford Handbook of Sondheim Studies offers a series of cutting-edge essays on the most important and compelling topics in the growing field of Sondheim Studies. Focusing on broad groups of issues relating to the music and the production of Sondheim works, rather than on biographical questions about the composer himself, the handbook represents a cross-disciplinary introduction to comprehending Sondheim in musicological, theatrical, and socio-cultural terms. This collection of never-before published essays addresses issues of artistic method and musico-dramaturgical form, while at the same time offering close readings of individual shows from a variety of analytical perspectives. The handbook is arranged into six broad sections: issues of intertextuality and authorship; Sondheim's pioneering work in developing the non-linear form of the concept musical; the production history of Sondheim's work; his writing for film and television; his exploitation and deployment of a wide range of musical genres; and how interpretation through key critical lenses (including sociology, history, and feminist and queer theory) establishes his position in a broader cultural context.

How Sondheim Found His Sound

Author: Steve Swayne
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
ISBN: 9780472114979
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 368

Book Description
An in-depth look at the musical and dramatic influences in Sondheim's music, and the first book to provide an overview of his style

Four by Sondheim, Wheeler, Lapine, Shevelove and Gelbart

Author:
Publisher: Hal Leonard Corporation
ISBN: 9781557834072
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 780

Book Description
(Applause Books). The complete book and lyrics with set and costume designs, production photos, essays, cast lists and credits, awards for major productions, selected discographies, and much more! Includes the shows A Little Night Music , Sweeney Todd , Sunday in the Park with George and A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum . A richly illustrated Sondheim treasury!

Not Ever Absent: Storytelling in Arts, Culture and Identity Formation

Author:
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 1848883374
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 275

Book Description
This volume was first published by Inter-Disciplinary Press in 2015. Storytelling has always played a central role in the formation of cultures and communities. All cultures define themselves and their place in the world through their stories. Similarly, our identities are largely constructed as narratives, and it is with the aid of storytelling that we manage to conceive of ourselves – our selves – as meaningful wholes. Thus, storytelling is not ever absent: it is to be found in literature, social life, in the places we visit and the buildings we live in. This volume presents storytelling in various appearances: from ancient myths and oral history, to transmedia narratives and digital stories. Different forms of narrative are analysed, as is the use of storytelling as a method for e.g. counselling, education and research. Throughout twenty-five chapters, a compelling overview of recent research on the topic is provided, both stressing the omnipresence of storytelling and exploring what storytelling is and isn’t.

On Sondheim

Author: Ethan Mordden
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199395004
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 231

Book Description
In On Sondheim, renowned author Ethan Mordden takes the reader on a tour of Stephen Sondheim's work, arguing for the importance and appeal of the composer-lyricist in American theater and, even more, in American culture. Over the course of eighteen shows, Mordden demonstrates that Sondheim is a classical composer who happens to write musicals. Sondheim has intellectualized the musical by tackling serious content usually reserved for the spoken stage: nonconformism (in Anyone Can Whistle, 1964), history (in Pacific Overtures, 1976), and cannibalism as a metaphor for class warfare (Sweeney Todd, 1979). Yet his work combines complex music and intellectual plots with a masterly skill for the fabric of theatre. His shows are all intensely theatrical, produced with flair and brilliance, whether in the lush operetta of A Little Night Music (1973) or the quixotic fairy-tale magic of Into the Woods (1987). Mordden provides fresh insights and analyses of every Sondheim show, from his first hit (West Side Story, 1957) to his most recent title (Road Show, 2008). Each musical has a dedicated chapter, including articles on Sondheim's life and his major influences, and comprehensive bibliographical and discographical essays place the Sondheim literature and recordings in perspective. Writing with his usual blend of the scholarly and the popular - with a wicked sense of humor - Ethan Mordden reveals why Stephen Sondheim has become Broadway's most significant voice in the last fifty years.

Sex with Strangers

Author: Laura Eason
Publisher: Dramatists Play Service, Inc.
ISBN: 0822232545
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 65

Book Description
How far will you go to get what you want? Will you be the same person if you do? When twenty-something star sex blogger and memoirist Ethan tracks down his idol, the gifted but obscure forty-ish novelist Olivia, he finds they each crave what the other possesses. As attraction turns to sex, and they inch closer to getting what they want, both must confront the dark side of ambition and the trouble of reinventing oneself when the past is only a click away.

Careful the Spell You Cast

Author: Ben Francis
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350281824
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 185

Book Description
Stephen Sondheim is one of the best-known and most-loved musical theatre composers, but also one of the most misunderstood, often being labelled as 'distant' or 'cynical'. Careful the Spell You Cast instead argues that Sondheim firmly belongs to the Broadway aspirational tradition, in that many of his characters are defined by their dreams: to abandon one's dream (as Ben does in Follies, Frank does in Merrily We Roll Along, and Addison does in Road Show) is to lose one's soul. Rather than take the established view of Sondheim as a cynic, this book contends that throughout Sondheim's work, letting go of one's illusions is a process that his characters need to go through, that they must cast off illusions and false dreams, without becoming cynical and destroying their genuine dreams in the process. In turn this view aligns Sondheim's work as being aspirational and a logical continuation from the work of his mentor, Oscar Hammerstein II. Following the trajectory of Sondheim's career, Careful the Spell You Cast shows how Sondheim has dramatized this process throughout his writing life alongside different collaborators. From his work as a lyricist with the musicals Gypsy and West Side Story through to his later collaborations with Hal Prince (Company, Follies) and James Lapine (Into the Woods, Sunday in the Park with George), this book reframes the established view through lyrical and structural analysis in relation to the characters within each of these celebrated works of musical theatre, arguing that Sondheim is, in the popular sense of the word, a romantic within the tradition of the Broadway musical.