Sense of Occasion (Applause Books). This item is unavailable.Sense of Occasion (Applause Books)

In this fast-moving, candid, conversational, and entertaining memoir, Harold Prince, the most honored director in the history of the American theater (22 Tony Awards and counting), looks back over his 70-year (and counting!) career. Featuring original material from Contradictions: Notes on Twenty-Six Years in the Theatre, Prince provides a fresh, new perspective on his writing from the vantage point of today. Sense of Occasion gives an insider s recollection of the making of such landmark musicals as West Side Story, Fiddler on the Roof, Cabaret, Company, Follies, Sweeney Todd, Evita, and Phantom of the Opera, with Prince s perceptive comments about his mentor George Abbott and his many celebrated collaborators, including Leonard Bernstein, Jerome Robbins, Stephen Sondheim, John Kander, Boris Aronson, Andrew Lloyd Webber, Angela Lansbury, Elizabeth Taylor, Zero Mostel, Carol Burnett, and Joel Grey. As well as detailing his titanic successes that changed the form and content of the American musical theatre, Prince even-handedly reflects on the shows that didn t work, most memorably and painfully Merrily We Roll Along. Throughout, he offers insights into the way business is conducted on Broadway, drawing sharp contrasts between past and present. This thoughtful, complete account of one of the most legendary and long-lived careers in theatre history, written by the man who lived it, is an essential work of personal and professional recollection.

HAROLD PRINCE (New York City) directed the original productions of She Loves Me, It s a Bird ... Superman, Cabaret, Zorba, Company, Follies, A Little Night Music, Pacific Overtures, On the Twentieth Century, Sweeney Todd, Evita, Merrily We Roll Along, The Phantom of the Opera, Kiss of the Spider Woman, Parade, and LoveMusik. He has also directed acclaimed revivals of Candide and Show Boat. Before becoming a director, Mr. Prince produced the original productions of The Pajama Game, Damn Yankees, New Girl in Town, West Side Story, Fiorello!, Tenderloin, Flora the Red Menace, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, and Fiddler on the Roof. Among the plays he has directed are Hollywood Arms, The Visit, The Great God Brown, End of the World, Play Memory, and his own play, Grandchild of Kings. His opera productions have been seen at Lyric Opera of Chicago, the Metropolitan Opera, San Francisco Opera, Houston Grand Opera, Dallas Opera, Vienna Staatsoper, and the Teatro Colon in Buenos Aires. His most recent version of Candide was seen at New York City Opera in January 2017. In 2006, he prepared a new version of Phantom that ran in Las Vegas at the Venetian Hotel for six years. Prince of Broadway, a musical compendium of Mr. Prince s entire career, will open on Broadway in August 2017. Mr. Prince is a trustee for the New York Public Library and previously served on the National Council on the Arts for the NEA. Mr. Prince is an officier in the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, given to him by the French government in 2008. He is the recipient of 21 Tony Awards, a Kennedy Center Honor, the Eugene O Neill Theatre Center s Monte Cristo Award, and a National Medal of the Arts from President Clinton for a career in which he changed the nature of the American musical.