Posts by Doug Reside

Enjoy more animated GIFS created from digitized images, made possible through a generous grant for the Theatre Division.

The story of the Scottsboro Boys feels especially timely. The musical is challenging and certain to provoke discussion among those willing to seriously consider the questions it forces audiences to ask.

Last fall, the Google Cultural Institute supported the digitization of over 1300 photographs of the original 1957 production of West Side Story from our Martha Swope, Friedman-Abeles, Florence Vandamm, Kenn Duncan, and Avery Willard photography collections.

Professional television, film, and theatrical costume designer Aileen Abercrombie designed, wrote, and edited an e-book guide to the library’s costume collections inspired by Olive’s work. The guide is freely downloadable in PDF form.

Teams will spend Monday morning imagining apps aimed at helping theater professionals of all kinds. Then, developers will have 24 hours to develop a prototype to demonstrate in a public presentation on Tuesday afternoon.

This month, thanks to the Library’s release of all of our high resolution photographs of objects with no known U.S. copyright restrictions, the promptbook, the sheet music, and the photos may be used without restriction for any purpose, including commercially.

Considered today, Golden Dawn is obviously problematic on multiple levels, and the lack of any revivals of the show is not necessarily a bad thing. However, the study of non-canonical works like Golden Dawn remains crucial to understanding the history of musicals.

In the musical Hamilton, which opened last night on Broadway, George Washington tells Alexander Hamilton, “You have no control...who tells your story.” At the New York Public Library, we preserve the artifacts that allow such stories to be told, and we have an especially strong collection of archives related to the women and men whose lives inspired the characters in the musical.

Little Nemo opened on Broadway at the opulent New Amsterdam Theatre on October 20, 1908, after a three-week tryout in Philadelphia. According to the New York Times, the city had “seen nothing bigger or better in extravaganza than ‘Little Nemo.’” It had also never seen a theatrical production more expensive.

After the wildly successful 2013 edition of Across A Crowded Room, we are about to launch a second edition that is more exciting than ever before.

A guest post by Sherman Yellen.

A guest post by Sherman Yellen, bookwriter of The Rothschilds.

The show opened at the 46th Street (now the Richard Rodgers) Theater in October 1960 to mixed reviews and closed the following spring after only 271 performances. It has received respectful attention in performances off-Broadway and in City Center’s Encores! series, but has never been revived on Broadway. What exactly went wrong?

A few months ago, I posted three demo recordings of Fiorello! from the Jerry Bock recordings in the Rodgers and Hammerstein Archives of Recorded Sound. This month, in honor of Fiddler's 50th anniversary, I am happy to share six demos of Fiddler on the Roof.

In the following blog post, Alisa Solomon examines three typescripts of Fiddler on the Roof that can be studied at the Library for the Performing Arts. Her book, Wonder of Wonders: A Cultural History of Fiddler on the Roof, is available to borrow.

Most of the articles memorializing director and actor Richard Attenborough cite his role as the nearly-mad scientist, Dr. John Hammond, in the film version of Jurassic Park or his directoral work on the film biography, Gandhi. Today, though, NPR's Morning Edition cited an interview in which Attenborough stated that his best work was the movie version of William Nicholson's play, Shadowlands.

While reading about riots in my hometown last night, I saw, out of the corner of my eye, a headline announcing the shocking death of Robin Williams. I really can add very little to the many expressions of grief from those whose for whom his films were foundational stories of childhood.

In the week following the announcement of the TONY awards, the winner for best musical, Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder, enjoyed its best week ever, bringing in more than $100,000 than the week before. The winner for best play, All The Way, seems to have been helped even more by the award, bringing in $200,000 more than the previous week. If it ever was in doubt, a TONY award is clearly good for business. At least if you win the big one.

In the following blog post, Professor Todd Decker examines four of the early typescripts of Show Boat that can be studied at the Library for the Performing Arts. He uses the Library's call numbers to identify the four copies. There are two copies in box 5 of the Billie Burke/Florenz Ziegfeld papers, one of which was once separated from the papers under the classmark: RM7430. One is in our collection of older musical theater libretti (NCOF+) and other remains separate under classmark (RM7787). Digital images of all four copies, presented here with the kind permission of the rights