PARADE - "Making A Musical" PARADE 1999 Tony Awards Coverage with 'The Creators'
It isn’t often that a Broadway show is created by such a fine and such a disparate group of individuals. PARADE was directed by theatre veteran and legend Harold Prince, with a book by the famed playwright Alfred Uhry and a score by the young and talented Jason Robert Brown. Together, these three men created a musical quite different from anything that had ever been seen on the Broadway stage. |
JASON ROBERT BROWN (Music and Lyrics)
Composer, conductor, arranger, lyricist, singer, and pianist Jason Robert Brown was born in 1970 in Tarrytown, NY. He studied at the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, NY, and began working in musical theater in New York City in the early '90s, where he concentrated on merging pop/rock sensibilities with the long tradition of Broadway musicals. His first musical, Songs for a New World, debuted in 1995. Parade, a musical Brown wrote with Alfred Uhry based on the trial and lynching of Leo Frank, premiered at the Lincoln Center Theater in 1998, eventually winning Brown a Tony Award for Best Musical Score. The Last Five Years followed and was staged in 2002. Brown has composed incidental music for several New York stage productions, and he contributed several songs to the ill-fated Broadway version of Urban Cowboy. He has also done orchestral and arrangement work for Liza Minelli, Laurie Beechman, Tovah Feldshuh, Yoko Ono, and vocal group the Tonics. Lauren Kennedy released an album of his songs called Songs of Jason Robert Brown in 2003. Brown's first solo album, Wearing Someone Else's Clothes, was released by Sh-K-Boom Records (in conjunction with Ghostlight and Razor & Tie) in 2005. An accomplished pianist and performer, Brown gigs regularly with his two-man band the Caucasian Rhythm Kings. He is married to fellow composer Georgia Stitt. (http://jasonrobertbrown.com)
INTERVIEWS:
Lincoln Center Theatre Platform Series
Playbill
Composer, conductor, arranger, lyricist, singer, and pianist Jason Robert Brown was born in 1970 in Tarrytown, NY. He studied at the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, NY, and began working in musical theater in New York City in the early '90s, where he concentrated on merging pop/rock sensibilities with the long tradition of Broadway musicals. His first musical, Songs for a New World, debuted in 1995. Parade, a musical Brown wrote with Alfred Uhry based on the trial and lynching of Leo Frank, premiered at the Lincoln Center Theater in 1998, eventually winning Brown a Tony Award for Best Musical Score. The Last Five Years followed and was staged in 2002. Brown has composed incidental music for several New York stage productions, and he contributed several songs to the ill-fated Broadway version of Urban Cowboy. He has also done orchestral and arrangement work for Liza Minelli, Laurie Beechman, Tovah Feldshuh, Yoko Ono, and vocal group the Tonics. Lauren Kennedy released an album of his songs called Songs of Jason Robert Brown in 2003. Brown's first solo album, Wearing Someone Else's Clothes, was released by Sh-K-Boom Records (in conjunction with Ghostlight and Razor & Tie) in 2005. An accomplished pianist and performer, Brown gigs regularly with his two-man band the Caucasian Rhythm Kings. He is married to fellow composer Georgia Stitt. (http://jasonrobertbrown.com)
INTERVIEWS:
Lincoln Center Theatre Platform Series
Playbill
ALFRED UHRY (Book)
Alfred has the distinct honor of being the only American writer to win a Pulitzer Prize, an Academy Award and a Tony Award. A graduate of Brown University, Uhry left his native Atlanta for the bright lights of New York City as a newlywed in 1959 to become a lyricist. Struggling to make ends meet for almost twenty years, he hit success in 1976 with The Robber Bridegroom—a bawdy Southern fairy tale based on a Eudora Welty story for which he received a Tony Award nomination for Best Book of a Musical. (The Tony Award went to the writers of A Chorus Line.) Ten years later he wrote his first play, the smash hit, Pulitzer Prize-winning Driving Miss Daisy. He would later win an Academy Award for the movie adaptation starring
Jessica Tandy and Morgan Freeman. Soon after, the Olympic Games' Cultural Olympiad commissioned Uhry to write a play for the Summer 1996 Olympics in his hometown of Atlanta. Thus the Tony Award- winning Last Night of Ballyhoo was born. Known for writing charming, engaging yet somewhat quirky Southern characters, Mr. Uhry's latest endeavor, Parade is a darker look at the nuances and history of the South. This chilling true-life story of the lynching of Leo Frank won a second Tony Award for Mr. Uhry as Best Book of a Musical in 1999.
INTERVIEWS:
Lincoln Center Theatre Platform Series (with Jason Robert Brown)
Atlanta Journal and Constitution- 1998
Part One Part Two Part Three
Alfred has the distinct honor of being the only American writer to win a Pulitzer Prize, an Academy Award and a Tony Award. A graduate of Brown University, Uhry left his native Atlanta for the bright lights of New York City as a newlywed in 1959 to become a lyricist. Struggling to make ends meet for almost twenty years, he hit success in 1976 with The Robber Bridegroom—a bawdy Southern fairy tale based on a Eudora Welty story for which he received a Tony Award nomination for Best Book of a Musical. (The Tony Award went to the writers of A Chorus Line.) Ten years later he wrote his first play, the smash hit, Pulitzer Prize-winning Driving Miss Daisy. He would later win an Academy Award for the movie adaptation starring
Jessica Tandy and Morgan Freeman. Soon after, the Olympic Games' Cultural Olympiad commissioned Uhry to write a play for the Summer 1996 Olympics in his hometown of Atlanta. Thus the Tony Award- winning Last Night of Ballyhoo was born. Known for writing charming, engaging yet somewhat quirky Southern characters, Mr. Uhry's latest endeavor, Parade is a darker look at the nuances and history of the South. This chilling true-life story of the lynching of Leo Frank won a second Tony Award for Mr. Uhry as Best Book of a Musical in 1999.
INTERVIEWS:
Lincoln Center Theatre Platform Series (with Jason Robert Brown)
Atlanta Journal and Constitution- 1998
Part One Part Two Part Three
HAROLD PRINCE (Co-Conceiver/Director of Original Broadway Production)
Harold Smith Prince, 30 January 1928, New York, USA. A distinguished director and producer - the supreme Broadway showman - whose career has lasted for many decades. ‘Hal’ Prince served his theatrical apprenticeship in the late 40s and early 50s with the esteemed author, director, and producer George Abbott. In 1954, he presented his first musical, The Pajama Game, in collaboration with Robert E. Griffith and Frederick Brisson. His association with Griffith continued until the latter’s death in 1961, mostly with hits such as Damn Yankees, New Girl In Town, West Side Story, and Fiorello! (1959). Tenderloin (1960) was a disappointment, as was Prince’s first assignment as a director, A Family Affair (1962). From then on, he has been the producer or co-producer and/or director for a whole range of (mostly) successful musicals such as A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum (1962), She Loves Me (1963), Fiddler On The Roof (1964), Baker Street (1965), Flora, The Red Menace (1965), It’s A Bird, It’s A Plane, It’s Superman (1966), Cabaret (1966), Zorba (1968), Company (1970), Follies (1971), A Little Night Music (1973), Candide (1974), Pacific Overtures (1976), On The Twentieth Century (1978), Evita (1978), Sweeney Todd (1979), Merrily We Roll Along (1981), A Doll’s Life (1982), Grind (1985), The Phantom Of The Opera (1986), Roza (1987), and Kiss Of The Spider Woman (1992). The list does not include re-staging and directing the original productions in several different countries, nor his work with American opera companies such as the New York Opera, the Houston Opera, and the Chicago Lyric Opera. For his innovative concepts, the ability to find the exact visual framework for the musical-narrative content, and his role, notably with Stephen Sondheim, in the drastic reshaping of the modern theatre musical, Prince has received more Tony Awards than anyone else, including one for his superb staging of the Broadway revival of Show Boat (1995). This was followed by a disappointingly brief run for Prince’s revival of the 1974 version of Candide (1997) and Parade (1998).
Harold Smith Prince, 30 January 1928, New York, USA. A distinguished director and producer - the supreme Broadway showman - whose career has lasted for many decades. ‘Hal’ Prince served his theatrical apprenticeship in the late 40s and early 50s with the esteemed author, director, and producer George Abbott. In 1954, he presented his first musical, The Pajama Game, in collaboration with Robert E. Griffith and Frederick Brisson. His association with Griffith continued until the latter’s death in 1961, mostly with hits such as Damn Yankees, New Girl In Town, West Side Story, and Fiorello! (1959). Tenderloin (1960) was a disappointment, as was Prince’s first assignment as a director, A Family Affair (1962). From then on, he has been the producer or co-producer and/or director for a whole range of (mostly) successful musicals such as A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum (1962), She Loves Me (1963), Fiddler On The Roof (1964), Baker Street (1965), Flora, The Red Menace (1965), It’s A Bird, It’s A Plane, It’s Superman (1966), Cabaret (1966), Zorba (1968), Company (1970), Follies (1971), A Little Night Music (1973), Candide (1974), Pacific Overtures (1976), On The Twentieth Century (1978), Evita (1978), Sweeney Todd (1979), Merrily We Roll Along (1981), A Doll’s Life (1982), Grind (1985), The Phantom Of The Opera (1986), Roza (1987), and Kiss Of The Spider Woman (1992). The list does not include re-staging and directing the original productions in several different countries, nor his work with American opera companies such as the New York Opera, the Houston Opera, and the Chicago Lyric Opera. For his innovative concepts, the ability to find the exact visual framework for the musical-narrative content, and his role, notably with Stephen Sondheim, in the drastic reshaping of the modern theatre musical, Prince has received more Tony Awards than anyone else, including one for his superb staging of the Broadway revival of Show Boat (1995). This was followed by a disappointingly brief run for Prince’s revival of the 1974 version of Candide (1997) and Parade (1998).