Overview

In this fast-moving, candid, conversational, and entertaining memoir, Harold Prince, the most honored director/producer in the history of the American theater looks back over his seventy-year career. In 1974, Prince released his first book, Contradictions: Notes on Twenty-Six Years in the Theatre. Although Contradictions has since attained cult status among producers, directors, and actors alike, Prince, in hindsight, believes he wasn't ready to publish such a tome at that point in his career. Although he doesn't regret that effort, he is at last prepared to conclude it. In Sense of Occasion, Prince returns to this seminal text, invigorating it with fresh insights cultivated through four decades of additional practice. As well as detailing his titanic successes that changed the form and content of the American musical theater, Prince evenhandedly reflects on the shows that didn't work, most memorably and painfully Merrily We Roll Along. Throughout, he offers insights into the way business is conducted on Broadway, drawing sharp contrasts between past and present. This thoughtful, complete account of one of the most legendary and long-lived careers in theater history, written by the man who lived it, is an essential work of personal and professional recollection.

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Harold Prince (1928-2019) directed the original productions of She Loves Me, It's a Bird . . . It's a Plane . . . It's Superman, Cabaret, Zorba, Company, Follies, A Little Night Music, Pacific Overtures, On the Twentieth Century, Sweeney Todd, Evita, Merrily We Roll Along, The Phantom of the Opera, Kiss of the Spider Woman, Parade, and LoveMusik. He also directed acclaimed revivals of Candide and Show Boat. Before becoming a director, Mr. Prince produced the original productions of The Pajama Game, Damn Yankees, New Girl in Town, West Side Story, Fiorello!, Tenderloin, Flora the Red Menace, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, and Fiddler on the Roof. The plays he directed include Hollywood Arms, The Visit, The Great God Brown, End of the World, Play Memory, and his own play, Grandchild of Kings. Most recently, Prince of Broadway, a musical compendium of Mr. Prince's entire career, opened on Broadway in August of 2017. His opera productions have been seen at Lyric Opera of Chicago, the Metropolitan Opera, San Francisco Opera, Houston Grand Opera, Dallas Opera, Vienna Staatsoper, and the Theater Colon in Buenos Aires. His most recent version of Candide was seen at New York City Opera in January of 2017. Mr. Prince received twenty-one Tony Awards, a Kennedy Center Honor, and the Eugene O'Neill Theatre Center's Monte Cristo Award. He was inducted into the Lincoln Center Hall of Fame as a part of their inaugural class and received a National Medal of the Arts from President Clinton for a career in which he changed the nature of the American musical. Michael Butler Murray is an audiobook narrator as well as an actor and producer known for Jersey Boys, Frontera, The Day of the Grackle, and iCarly: iGo to Japan.

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