
1776
America’s obsession with its own history had already resulted in at least two Broadway musicals based on momentous national events before this show opened at the 46th Street Theatre on ...

Adam Guettel
(1964).Stage composer and lyricist. One of the most promising and accomplished songwriters at the turn of the twentieth century, he has garnered plenty of attention in his recent career. ...

Adler and Ross
Songwriting team.(b. 1921)was born in New York, the son of Clarence Adler, a concert pianist and music teacher. Rejecting his father's interest in classical music, he studied at ...

Agnes de Mille
(1905–1993).Stage choreographer and director. Arguably Broadway's most influential choreographer, she created a long list of unforgettable musical numbers in legendary shows. She was born in New York ...

Alan Jay Lerner
(1918–86),born in New York City, after graduation from Harvard (1940) met Frederick Loewe (1904–88), an Austrian-born composer, for whose music he wrote lyrics in their successful collaboration on ...

Alex A. Aarons
Stage producing team. A pair of farsighted producers, they presented some outstanding musicals by the Gershwins during their brief but memorable partnership in the 1920s. Aarons (1891–1943) was born ...

Allegro
The third collaboration for the stage between Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II, which opened at the Majestic Theatre in New York on 10 October 1947, was completely out of ...

Allen Kearns
(1893–1956).Stage performer. A reliable leading man in Broadway and London musicals, he played juvenile roles for nearly thirty years. Born in Brockville, Ontario, Canada, Kearns was on stage as ...

André Kostelanetz
B. 22 December 1901, St. Petersburg, Russia, d. 13 January 1980, Port-au-Prince, Haiti. A distinguished conductor, composer, arranger and pianist who was instrumental in bridging the divide between ...

Andrew Lloyd Webber
(b London, 1948).Eng. composer. With Tim Rice (b 1944) as librettist, comp. highly successful musicals, Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat (1968), Jesus Christ Superstar (1970), and Evita ...

Androcles and the Lion
(NBC-TV 1967). This musical adaptation of George Bernard Shaw's version of the classic fable retained bits of the playwright's philosophical point of view, and Richard Rodgers wrote some very British ...

Ann Sothern
(1909–2001).Film, stage, and television performer. A bouncy blonde singer–actress with a pleasantly nasal voice, she enjoyed a long career that covered various media. Sothern was born in Valley City ...

Anne Bogart
(1953– )American director. Bogart's early work was influenced by postmodern dance and by several stays in Germany, from which she returned intent on exploring American forms, themes, and writers. She ...

Annie Get Your Gun
Like many other films boasting Irving Berlin scores, Annie Get Your Gun is rarely seen nowadays, owing to the composer’s original financial demands over any performance or broadcasting of his ...

audition
Trial run by an actor seeking employment, either to display his talents in general or to demonstrate his fitness for a particular role by reading some part of it to ...

Babes in Arms
Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart were right at the peak of their form for this show, which opened at the Shubert Theatre in New York on 14 April 1937. Their ...

Ballet in American Theatre
Ballet has been a feature of regular American theatre, as distinguished from a totally separate ballet theatre with great ballet companies, virtually from the start. Indeed, because we could not ...

Barbara Cook
(1927– ).Stage and television performer. One of the finest voices ever to grace the Broadway stage, she had only one major Broadway success but has remained a star over the ...

Barbara Sfraga
B. 28 October 1956, Long Island, New York, USA. Especially popular on the east coast, Sfraga sings often in the New York area, usually with bass player Chris Sullivan and ...

Beatrice Lillie
(1894–1989)Canadian comedienne. Born in Toronto, Bea Lillie made her English stage debut in 1914 and her American debut in 1924, dividing a career of some 50 shows between the ...