Arthur Laurents's career as a playwright, screenwriter, book writer for musicals and director spanned over half a century. His first Broadway play, Home of the Brave, was produced in 1945; his last play, Come Back, Come Back, Wherever You Are, was produced in 2009 when he was ninety-one. Although he is best known for his work on the classic musicals Gypsy and West Side Story and for his screenplays for Rope, The Way We Were, and The Turning Point, Laurents is the author of seventeen full-length plays, numerous screenplays and three volumes of memoirs. Despite the length and distinction of Laurents's career, until now no one has written a full-length critical study of his work. Laurentss' name was associated with a few hit musicals and films, but his best work, the plays he wrote since 1975, are not as well known. One reason is that the economics of the American theatre have changed during the writer's lifetime and Laurents's serious plays were performed Off-Broadway or at regional theatres. Few were published, except in acting editions, until a volume of Selected Plays was assembled in 2005. Moreover, Laurents's highly controversial volumes of memoirs, filled with attacks on people who he felt betrayed him over the years, overshadowed his later work. Ignoring most his own plays in the memoirs did not help to maintain his reputation as a serious playwright This book rectifies the absence of a serious examination of all of Laurents's major work. This first comprehensive study of Laurents's work focuses on the subjects and themes that recur in his work, particularly the interrelated topics of gender politics, homosexuality and the dynamics of marriage. The position of women and gay men changed greatly over the sixty-plus years of Laurents's career and we see those changes reflected in his work, particularly in the shifting power dynamics within a marriage. Laurents was fascinated by the dynamics of marriage. In his plays there is always a tension between love and the difficulty, if not impossibility, of monogamy. In works like The Enclave, we also see a variety of ways in which gay men try to live proud lives in a heteronormative society. In that play and in Two Lives, Laurents examines how gay men negotiate something like a marriage before gay marriages were legally sanctioned. The book also covers the ways in which Laurents's plays reflect his interest in leftist politics from the 1940s through the various liberations of the late 1960s and 1970s. Above all, the study argues that if there is any common theme running through the plays, films and memoirs, it is betrayal-betrayal of marriage partner, friend, artistic collaborator and, most important, betrayal of one's own ideals. The Works of Arthur Laurents will be of particular interest to students and scholarsof American drama, musical theatre, American film, gender studies, gay studies, and Jewish studies.

Sondheim in Our Time and His offers a wide-ranging historical investigation of the landmark works and extraordinary career of Stephen Sondheim, a career which has spanned much of the history of American musical theater. Each author uncovers those aspects of biography, collaborative process, and contemporary context that impacted the creation and reception of Sondheim's musicals. In addition, several authors explore in detail how Sondheim's shows have been dramatically revised and adapted over time. Multiple chapters invite the reader to rethink Sondheim's works from a distinctly contemporary critical perspective and to consider how these musicals are being reenvisioned today. Through chapters focused on individual musicals, and others that explore a specific topic as manifested throughout his entire career, plus an afterword by Kristen Anderson-Lopez; by digging deep into the archives and focusing intently on his scores; from interviews with performers, directors, and bookwriters, and close study of live and recorded productions--volume editor W. Anthony Sheppard brings together Sondheim's past with the present, thriving existence of his musicals.

Lively, sophisticated, and filled with first-person tributes and glorious images, Sondheim: His Life, His Shows, His Legacy lifts the curtain on a Broadway legend. "Aside from Sondheim's own exceptional books...this may be the best coffee-table volume devoted to his work."(Shelf Awareness) Brimming with insights from a veritable Who's Who of Broadway Babies and complemented by more than two hundred color and black-and-white images, Sondheim: His Life, His Shows, His Legacy offers a witty, multidimensional look at the musical genius behind Company, Follies, A Little Night Music, Into the Woods, Sunday in the Park with George, Sweeney Todd, and the landmark West Side Story and Gypsy. Exploring the unique bond between Sondheim and his audiences, author Stephen M. Silverman further examines the challenging Sondheim works that continue to develop devoted new followings: Anyone Can Whistle, Pacific Overtures, Merrily We Roll Along, Assassins, and Passion. The result is a lavish, highly engrossing documentation of the dynamic force who reshaped twentieth-century American musical history.

The Routledge Companion to the Contemporary Musical is dedicated to the musical’s evolving relationship to American culture in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. In the past decade-and-a-half, international scholars from an ever-widening number of disciplines and specializations have been actively contributing to the interdisciplinary field of musical theater studies. Musicals have served not only to mirror the sociopolitical, economic, and cultural tenor of the times, but have helped shape and influence it, in America and across the globe: a genre that may seem, at first glance, light-hearted and escapist serves also as a bold commentary on society. Forty-four essays examine the contemporary musical as an ever-shifting product of an ever-changing culture. This volume sheds new light on the American musical as a thriving, contemporary performing arts genre, one that could have died out in the post-Tin Pan Alley era but instead has managed to remain culturally viable and influential, in part by newly embracing a series of complex contradictions. At present, the American musical is a live, localized, old-fashioned genre that has simultaneously developed into an increasingly globalized, tech-savvy, intensely mediated mass entertainment form. Similarly, as it has become increasingly international in its scope and appeal, the stage musical has also become more firmly rooted to Broadway—the idea, if not the place—and thus branded as a quintessentially American entertainment.

Albee and Influence contains essays, written by leading Albee scholars, that focus on literary and philosophical influences on Edward Albee’s plays as well as essays on writers and works that Albee influenced.

Aficionados of music, dance, opera, and musical theater will relish this volume featuring over 200 articles showcasing composers, singers, musicians, dancers, and choreographers across eras and styles. Read about Hildegard of Bingen, whose Symphonia expressed both spiritual and physical desire for the Virgin Mary, and George Frideric Handel, who not only created roles for castrati but was behind the Venetian opera's preoccupations with gender ambiguity. Discover Alban Berg’s Lulu, opera’s first openly lesbian character. And don’t forget Kiss Me Kate, the hit 1948 Broadway musical: written by Cole Porter, married though openly gay; directed by John C. Wilson, Noël Coward's ex-lover; and featuring Harold Lang, who had affairs with Leonard Bernstein and Gore Vidal. No single volume has ever achieved the breadth of this scholarly yet eminently readable compendium. It includes overviews of genres as well as fascinating biographical entries on hundreds of figures such as Peter Tchaikovsky, Maurice Ravel, Sergei Diaghilev, Bessie Smith, Aaron Copland, Stephen Sondheim, Alvin Ailey, Rufus Wainwright, and Ani DiFranco.