Many people who work on Broadway keep scrapbooks of their experiences, with photos, signed posters, ticket stubs, and of course Playbills. Playbill Books has expanded this idea into an annual project that is becoming a Broadway institution: The Playbill Broadway Yearbook. Taking the form of a school yearbook, the third edition is packed with photos and memorabilia from the 2006-2007 Broadway season. The new edition includes chapters on all 67 Broadway shows that ran during the season - new shows like Curtains and Spring Awakening as well as long-running ones like Wicked. In addition to headshots of all the actors who appeared in Playbill, the book has photos of producers, writers, designers, stage managers, stagehands, musicians - even ushers. The Playbill Broadway Yearbook also has a correspondent on each production to report on inside information: opening-night gifts, who got the Gypsy Robe, daily rituals, celebrity visits, memorable ad-libs, and more. Correspondents range from dressers and stage doormen to stage managers, dancers, featured players, and even stars of the shows.

In a Chicago junk shop three small-time crooks plot to rob a man of his coin collection, the showpiece of which is a valuable "Buffalo nickel". These high-minded grifters fancy themselves businessmen pursuing legitmate free enterprise. But the reality of the three--Donny, the oafish junk shop owner; Bobby, a young junkie Donny has taken under his wing; and "Teach"; a violently paranoid braggart--is that they are merely pawns caught up in their own game of last-chance, dead-end, empty pipe dreams.

Over a half century, a small Indiana town hosts a circus troupe during the off-seasons in linked stories “as graceful as any acrobat’s high-wire act” (San Francisco Chronicle). A Story Prize Finalist From 1884 to 1939, the Great Porter Circus made the unlikely choice to winter in an Indiana town called Lima, a place that feels as classic as Sherwood Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio, and as wondrous as a first trip to the Big Top. In Lima, an elephant can change the course of a man's life—or the manner of his death. Jennie Dixianna entices men with her dazzling Spin of Death and keeps them in line with secrets locked in a cedar box. The lonely wife of the show’s manager has each room of her house painted like a sideshow banner, indulging her desperate passion for a young painter. And a former clown seeks consolation from his loveless marriage in his post-circus job at Clown Alley Cleaners. In this collection of linked stories spanning decades, Cathy Day follows the circus people into their everyday lives and brings the greatest show on earth to the page. “[An] exquisite story collection.” —The Washington Post “Often funny, always graceful, and rich with a mix of historical and imaginative detail.” —Tim O’Brien, author of The Things They Carried “Sublimely imaginative and affecting.” —The Boston Globe

Each production of one season is used as the basis for an examination of one aspect of the Broadway theater

This is the most comprehensive and insightful reference available on Broadway theater as an American cultural phenomenon and an illuminator of American life. Broadway: An Encyclopedia of Theater and American Culture is the first major reference work to explore just how much the "Great White Way" illuminates our national character. In two volumes spanning the era from the mid-19th century to the present, it offers nearly 200 entries on a variety of topics, including spotlights on 30 landmark productions—from Shuffle Along to Oklahoma! to Oh Calcutta! to The Producers—that not only changed American theater but American culture as well. In addition, Broadway offers thirty extended thematic essays gauging the powerful impact of theater on American life, with entries on race relations, women in society, sexuality, film, media, technology, tourism, and off-Broadway and noncommercial theater. There are also 110 profile entries on key persons and institutions—from the famous to the infamous to the all but forgotten—whose unique careers and contributions impacted Broadway and its place in the American landscape.

"Wait..Gypsy didn't win the Tony for Best Musical?" That's a question that gets asked over and over again, every time a new Rose takes to the runway in the Broadway classic "Gypsy". In "Strippers, Showgirls and Sharks", the popular syndicated theatre critic Peter Filichia chronicles the history of the American musical by looking at those shows that did not win the Tony Award for Best Musical. It happens every spring: The American Theatre Wing bestows its annual awards. Only those shows that have reached Broadway are nominated and while all Tony Awards are created equal in height, width and depth, the universally acknowledged biggest prize is the Best Musical Tony. The envelope is opened. The winner is announced and, then, the screeching begins. "Oh no! They gave it to that?" Did the best musical always win the Best Musical prize? Were there other factors that kept a more deserving show from copping the prize? Peter Filichia answers all these questions and more in "Strippers, Showgirls and Sharks" as he looks at many of the 153 previous Best Musical Nominees that didn't win the big prize. What were the biggest omissions? "Gypsy" had the distinct displeasure of not being either the first or second choice of the committee. In 1959 when Ethel Merman and a variety of strippers took the stage, the Tony for Best Musical was a tie between "The Sound of Music" and "Fiorello". In 1971, Stephen Sondheim's "Follies" and its ghostly showgirls lost to a "groovy" re-tuning of "Two Gentlemen of Verona" that hasn't passed the test of time. And, in 1957, "West Side Story", its Jets and Sharks, were bested by the fine people of River City Iowa singing their Americana hearts out in "The Music Man". If you love Broadway, scratch your head on Tony Award night and still can't figure out how a show you loathed won the Tony for Best Musical, you will love riding through the years with Peter Filichia, one of America's most respected and popular theatre critics.

Three out of four Broadway-bound musicals fail to get there, and many of those that do, ultimately fail. The Broadway Musical takes an engrossing look at the industry's successes and failures in an effort to understand the phenomenon of mass collaboration that is Broadway. The authors investigate the complicated machinery of show business from its birth around the turn of the century through its survival of the cost explosions of the 1980s. Through interviews with many of Broadway's top producers, directors, designers, actors, songwriters, lyricists, librettists, musicians, and other artists, they lead us on an intimate tour of the creative process. They also explore the roles of top executives and the reactions of critics and audiences. They conclude with a fascinating look at the inherent conflicts and tensions that have resulted in some of the most seamless and best-loved productions on Broadway. Fans of the genre as well as scholars and students of American culture will delight in this revealing insider's look at the scenes behind the scenes and the history of one of America's most popular forms of entertainment. The effort that goes into making a Broadway musical is enormous, first requiring the enthusiasm of a group of initial creative artists and then the cooperation of hundreds of talented individuals and the investment of millions of dollars before each show is ready to open. Each venture is marked perhaps more by conflict than collaboration, and the continuation of the industry seems more remarkable when it is revealed that three out of four Broadway musicals fail to break even on Broadway. What goes into the making of a successful musical? No venture can be a success without good collaboration, but whether it is good or bad in any specific case cannot be known beforehand. The Broadway Musical is an investigation into this phenomenon of collaboration and its seeming unpredictability. To gather information, Bernard Rosenberg and Ernest Harburg have interviewed many of the top producers, directors, designers, players, songwriters, lyricists, librettists, and other artists that are responsible for today's Broadway musicals. Starting with the development of the industry itself, the authors investigate the complicated machinery of show business and detail how it was able to survive the rapidly rising costs of productions in the 1980s. Proceeding to the creative aspects of the show, the authors provide an intimate look at the assembling of the musical at every level, detailing the workings of the top executives, musicians, songwriters, techne, the reaction of the critics and the audience. The book concludes with a lengthy look at the phenomenon of collaboration itself, describing the inherent conflict and tension that often adds to the production of a Broadway musical. The Broadway Musical is an engrossing look at the successes and failures of this most elaborate form of live entertainment.

(Piano/Vocal/Guitar Songbook). Features 18 piano/vocal selections from this Broadway hit that won both Tony and Drama Desk awards. Includes a plot synopsis, sensational color photos, and these tunes: The Ballad of Farquaad * Big Bright Beautiful World * Build a Wall * Don't Let Me Go * Donkey Pot Pie * Finale (This Is Our Story) * Freak Flag * I Know It's Today * I Think I Got You Beat * Make a Move * More to the Story * Morning Person * Story of My Life * This Is How a Dream Comes True * Travel Song * What's Up, Duloc? * When Words Fail * Who I'd Be.