Present at the Creation: Leaping in the Dark and Going Against the Grain: 1776, Pippin, M. Butterfly, La Bete & Other Broadway Adventures (Applause Books) - Hardcover

Ostrow, Stuart

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1557836469 ISBN 13: 9781557836465

Publisher: Applause, 2005

Synopsis

“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 Bête, 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.

About this title

About the Author:

Stuart Ostrow is the Distinguished University Professor of Theatre at the University of Houston.

From Booklist:

*Starred Review* Memoirs, like Broadway shows, are hit or miss. Either the memoirist tactfully omits the inconvenient, embarrassing, and, yes, interesting details of the past and bores his readers. Or he provides the world with an honest, if highly subjective, remembrance of things past, as Broadway producer Ostrow does. Even if the world Ostrow recounts, that of the Great American Broadway Musical as practiced by Rodgers and Hammerstein and Lerner and Loewe, were not fast fading, Ostrow's reminiscences would be worth reading. He knows of what he writes, having produced many hit 1960s and 1970s musicals, including 1776, The Apple Tree, and Pippin, and his share of bombs. As he says more than once, he was just following the dictum of friend and mentor Frank Loesser: "A producer is someone who knows a writer." Ostrow got to know a lot of the top writers in the field, and he produced them. Now he shares his opinions of and insights into their work and that of their contemporaries. Which isn't to say he is a gossipmonger. He would rather dissect a show to reveal what makes it a hit than eviscerate a colleague. That will disappoint some, but true fans of the Broadway musical will find this book more intellectually satisfying and nutritious than many another on their passion. Jack Helbig
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

About this edition

• Publisher: Applause
• Publication date: 2005
• ISBN 10: 1557836469
• ISBN 13: 9781557836465
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 192