It would be difficult, indeed, to imagine anyone more qualified to give us a celebration, from the perspective of an insider, of the Broadway musical. From the first run of Guys and Dolls in 1950 to the recent debut of Rent, Stuart Ostrow, a protege of the great composer-lyricist Frank Loesser, has been personally involved in many of the major Broadway productions of our time. The steadily growing number of fans of the Great White Way will delight in his reminiscences about the shows that have shaped musical theater, such as Hello Dolly, Funny Girl, Man of LaMancha, Cabaret, 1776, and M. Butterfly--to name just a few. Readers of A Producer's Broadway Journey will certainly be entertained by Ostrow's behind-the-scenes anecdotes of Bob Fosse, Barbra Streisand, Betty Buckley, Cole Porter, Lerner and Loewe, Hal Prince, Ethel Merman, and many other legends encountered in his accomplished career. But in addition to the tales or re-writes, stand-ins, near-disasters, and moments of theatrical magic, the author also provides a unique historical perspective on almost half a century of the musical.
Stuart Ostrow was Frank Loesser's apprentice and became the Vice President and General Manager of Frank Music Corp., and Frank Productions, Inc., the Broadway co-producers of: The Most Happy Fella, The Music Man, Greenwillow, and How To Succeed In Business With Really Trying.
As a solo producer, his many original award-winning Broadway and West End productions include: M. Butterfly, which won the Tony Award for Best Play, Pippin, and 1776, which received both the New York and London Drama Critics Awards as well as the Tony Award for Best Musical. He also produced, The Apple Tree, produced and directed Here's Love, was the associate director of Chicago, and the author of Stages, on Broadway.
Mr. Ostrow established the Stuart Ostrow Foundation's Musical Theatre Lab in 1973; a non-profit, professional workshop for original musical theatre, the first of its kind. Since its inception the MTLab has presented 32 experimental new works, including The Robber Bridegroom, by Alfred Uhry and Robert Waldman, Really Rosie, by Maurice Sendak and Carole King, Up From Paradise, by Arthur Miller and Stanley Silverman, and Medea by Robert Wilson.
Stuart Ostrow is a trained musician, choral conductor-arranger, and clarinetist. He has served on the Board of Governors of The League of New York Theatres, the Advisory Committee of The New York Public Library, and the Board of Directors of the American National Theatre and Academy. He has also served on The Overseer's Committee to visit Harvard's Loeb Drama Center, and was a founding panel member of the Opera-Musical Theatre Program of the National Endowment for the Arts.
He produced the original Broadway production of La Bete, which also won the Olivier Award for Best Comedy, and was honored as Producer of the Year, by the National Alliance for Musical Theatre. He is the Distinguished University Professor of Theatre at the University of Houston, and the author of A Producer's Broadway Journey and Thank You Very Much (The Little Guide To Auditioning For The Musical Theatre.) His recent book Present At The Creation, Leaping In The Dark and Going Against The Grain: 1776, Pippin, M. Butterfly, La Bete & Other Broadway Adventures was voted one of the Top Ten Arts Books 2006 by Booklist. Mr. Ostrow has served as a member of the Pulitzer Prize Drama Jury, and is the Chairman of the Board of Trustees for the Institute for Advanced Study in Musical Theatre.
