American theater history
American Theatre History The Two Area’s of theatre where American really excel: Musicals and Film The first original theater work of note in America was Uncle Tom’s Cabin. (1882) The musical production that began musical theater was Oklahoma! 1944
American Theatre History America’s first great teacher of playwriting and play productions, George Peirce Baker Death of a Salesman, by Arthur Miller, the most discussed play in American Theatre History. The most successful musical theater writer/ Composer of the past 30 years: Stephen Sondheim.
American Non-Musical Theatre Eugene O’Neill / Long Day’s Journey into Night , presents a depressing and horrifying picture of a wealthy family in which one son is suffering from tuberculosis, and the father and other son are drunks. The play leaves its audiences drained, partly because it is so powerful and partly because it is about O’Neil’s own family, he being the son with tuberculosis.
Non-Musical cont. Little Foxes, a powerful drama about Southern corruption by our most celebrated woman dramatist, Lillian Hellman. Our Town by Thornton Wilder
Non-Musical cont. Arsenic and Old Lace by Joseph Keller Life with Father by Howard Lindsay and Russel Crouse
Non-Musical cont. The Glass Menagerie, A Street Car Named Desire, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof by Tennessee Williams All my Sons, Death of a Salesman, The Crucible, and a View from the Bridge by Arthur Miller
Non-Musical cont. The Best playwright of this period Edward Albee. He wrote Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Sam Shepherd August Wilson
Non-Musical cont. (3) Neil Simon the biggest money maker of all time and certainly one of the funniest writers in all theatre history. Barefoot in the Park, The Odd Couple, and the Goodbye Girl Woody Allen
Musical Theater Great Collaborators: Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein also knows as Rodgers and Hammerstein. Starts off Musical with Oklahoma! In 1944. They also collaborated on such hits as The King and I, The Sound of Music, South Pacific, and Carousel.
Musical Theater Great Collaborators: Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Lowe also know as Learner and Lowe. Their greatest hits are Brigadoon, My Fair Lady, and Camelot.
Famous Contemporaries of the Great Collaborators Stephen Sondheim and Leonard Bernstein
Famous Contemporaries Meredith Wilson / The Music Man Highlights of the 1960’s Hello Dolly! The Fantasticks Fiddler on the Roof
The New Muscials Claude-Michel Schonberg, Alain Boublil, and Herbert Kretzmer / Les Miserables Edward Kleban / A Chorus Line
The New Muscials Andrew Lloyd Webber / Cats, Joseph’s Amazing Technicolor Dream Coat, Phantom of the Opera
The New Muscials Stephen Sondheim / A Funny thing happened on the way to the forum, Sweeney Todd, Into the Woods , and West-side story
Newest Broadway Musicals