Sondheim in Our Time and His

by Sheppard, W. Anthony

• ISBN13: 9780197603192
• ISBN10: 019760319X
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2022-02-25
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

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.

Author Biography

W. Anthony Sheppard is Marylin and Arthur Levitt Professor of Music at Williams College. His first book, Revealing Masks: Exotic Influences and Ritualized Performance in Modernist Music Theater received the Kurt Weill Prize, his article on Madama Butterfly and film earned the ASCAP Deems Taylor
Award, an article on World War II film music was honored with the Alfred Einstein Award by the American Musicological Society, and "Puccini and the Music Boxes" received the AMS H. Colin Slim Award. His most recent book, Extreme Exoticism: Japan in the American Musical Imagination, received the AMS
Music in American Culture Award and the Society for American Music Lowens Award. Sheppard's research has been supported by the NEH, the American Philosophical Society, the ACLS, and the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton. He has served as Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of the American
Musicological Society and is now Series Editor of AMS Studies in Music.

Table of Contents

Introduction: Our Sondheim
W. ANTHONY SHEPPARD

Part I. Early Stages
1. Williams College Before, During, and After Sondheim
STEVE SWAYNE
2. Fragments of Fairyland: Sondheim's Abandoned Adaptation of Mary Poppins
DOMINIC McHUGH
3. "...nearly everything I wrote": Sondheim and the Actors Studio
JEFFREY MAGEE
4. Breakout from the Asylum of Conformity: Sondheim, Laurents, and the Dramaturgy of Anyone Can Whistle
JAMES O'LEARY

Part II. Staging Identities
5. Sondheim's Whiteness
TODD DECKER
6. Politics, Representation, and Collaboration in Pacific Overtures (1976)
ASHLEY M. PRIBYL
7. Sexual Identity in Company, 1969-2019
ANDREW BUCHMAN
8. Students Performing Gender with Sondheim's Musicals in the Age of #MeToo
STACY WOLF

Part III. Versions, Genres, and Collaborations
9. Sweeney's Identity Crisis and the Dynamic Potential of Generic Hybridity
KIM H. KOWALKE
10. "A sad and listless affair": The Unsung Film Adaptation of Sondheim's A Little Night Music
GEOFFREY BLOCK

Part IV. Reconceived Structures and Techniques
11. Time and Time Again: Temporal Structures in Sondheim's Musicals
JIM LOVENSHEIMER
12. Sunday in the Park with Sondheim, Lapine, Seurat, and Babbitt
LARA E. HOUSEZ
13. Sondheim and the 11 O'clock Principle
ELIZABETH A. WELLS
14. Finishing the Line: Wit, Rhythm, and Rhyme in Sondheim
W. ANTHONY SHEPPARD

Afterword: Moving on with Sondheim
KRISTEN ANDERSON-LOPEZ