The Secret Life of the American Musical: How Broadway Shows Are Built
Language: English
Published by Sarah Crichton Books, 2016
- Hardcover
- Used
Seller: ThriftBooks-Reno, Reno, NV, U.S.A.ThriftBooks-Reno
AbeBooks seller since May 25, 2012
Condition: Used - Very good
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Add to basketItem description from seller
Missing dust jacket; May have limited writing in cover pages. Pages are unmarked. ~ ThriftBooks: Read More, Spend Less.
Seller Inventory # G0374256926I4N01
- Title
- The Secret Life of the American Musical: How Broadway Shows Are Built
- Author
- Viertel, Jack
- Publisher
- Sarah Crichton Books
- Publication year
- 2016
- Condition
- Very Good
- Dust jacket
- No Jacket
- Binding
- Hardcover
- Language
- English
- ISBN 10
- 0374256926
- ISBN 13
- 9780374256920
- Item weight
- 1.22 pounds
A New York Times Bestseller
For almost a century, Americans have been losing their hearts and losing their minds in an insatiable love affair with the American musical. It often begins in childhood in a darkened theater, grows into something more serious for high school actors, and reaches its passionate zenith when it comes time for love, marriage, and children, who will start the cycle all over again. Americans love musicals. Americans invented musicals. Americans perfected musicals. But what, exactly, is a musical?
In The Secret Life of the American Musical, Jack Viertel takes them apart, puts them back together, sings their praises, marvels at their unflagging inventiveness, and occasionally despairs over their more embarrassing shortcomings. In the process, he invites us to fall in love all over again by showing us how musicals happen, what makes them work, how they captivate audiences, and how one landmark show leads to the nextby design or by accident, by emulation or by rebellionfrom Oklahoma! to Hamilton and onward.
Structured like a musical, The Secret Life of the American Musical begins with an overture and concludes with a curtain call, with stops in between for I Want songs, conditional love songs, production numbers, star turns, and finales. The ultimate insider, Viertel has spent three decades on Broadway, working on dozens of shows old and new as a conceiver, producer, dramaturg, and general creative force; he has his own unique way of looking at the process and at the people who collaborate to make musicals a reality. He shows us patterns in the architecture of classic shows and charts the inevitable evolution that has taken place in musical theater as America itself has evolved socially and politically.
The Secret Life of the American Musical makes you feel as though youve been there in the rehearsal room, in the front row of the theater, and in the working offices of theater owners and producers as they pursue their own love affair with that rare and elusive beastthe Broadway hit.
"Synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.
About the Author
Jack Viertel is the senior vice president of Jujamcyn Theaters, which owns and operates five Broadway theaters. He has been involved in dozens of productions presented by Jujamcyn since 1987, including multiple Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award winners, from City of Angels to Angels in America. He has also helped shepherd six of August Wilsons plays to Broadway. He is the artistic director of New York City Centers acclaimed Encores! series, which presents three musical productions every season. In that capacity he has overseen fifty shows, for some of which he adapted the scripts. He conceived the long-running Smokey Joes Cafe and the critically acclaimed After Midnight and has been a creative consultant on many shows, including Hairspray, A
Christmas Story, and Dear Evan Hansen. He was the Mark Taper Forums dramaturg and the drama critic
and arts editor of the Los Angeles Herald Examiner, and he has spent a decade teaching musical theater
at the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University.
"About the title" may belong to another edition of this title.
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