Red, Hot & Blue: A Salute to American Musicals is a site that examines the Broadway and Hollywood musical from nineteenth-century vaudeville, through its success on Broadway and the movies, to its redefined cultural role today. The title of the exhibition is taken from Cole Porter's 1936 Broadway musical, and spotlights the performers, producers, composers, lyricists, choreographers, set and costume designers, and directors who gave voice and vision to the American experience in the twentieth century. Visit the site and develop a kind of "family tree" relating all the performers into a relational whole.
http://www.npg.si.edu/exh/rh&b/index.htm
Not all musicals are hits. Some are called "flops" because they fail with the critics and at the box office. How do talented people come up with bad ideas? One of the most recent flops was the musical The Capeman by Paul Simon and Derek Walcott Visit the following sites and get in depth information on how a production gets invented, develops and fails. http://www.geocities.com/Broadway/Stage/2490/capeman.htmlhttp://www.imagi-nation.com/moonstruck/albm85.html
The most important musical theatre writer/composer in the modern Broadway theater is Stephen Sondheim. Visit the Sondheim site at http://www.sondheim.com/ and see where his shows are being produced all over America. Also, examine the controversy surrounding the production of Assassins on Broadway following the attacks of September 11, 2001. Is there a Sondheim musical being produced in your area? Go see it!
