• Complain

John Vacha - The Music Went Round and Around: The Story of Musicarnival

Here you can read online John Vacha - The Music Went Round and Around: The Story of Musicarnival full text of the book (entire story) in english for free. Download pdf and epub, get meaning, cover and reviews about this ebook. year: 2004, publisher: Kent State Univ Press, genre: Detective and thriller. Description of the work, (preface) as well as reviews are available. Best literature library LitArk.com created for fans of good reading and offers a wide selection of genres:

Romance novel Science fiction Adventure Detective Science History Home and family Prose Art Politics Computer Non-fiction Religion Business Children Humor

Choose a favorite category and find really read worthwhile books. Enjoy immersion in the world of imagination, feel the emotions of the characters or learn something new for yourself, make an fascinating discovery.

John Vacha The Music Went Round and Around: The Story of Musicarnival
  • Book:
    The Music Went Round and Around: The Story of Musicarnival
  • Author:
  • Publisher:
    Kent State Univ Press
  • Genre:
  • Year:
    2004
  • Rating:
    4 / 5
  • Favourites:
    Add to favourites
  • Your mark:
    • 80
    • 1
    • 2
    • 3
    • 4
    • 5

The Music Went Round and Around: The Story of Musicarnival: summary, description and annotation

We offer to read an annotation, description, summary or preface (depends on what the author of the book "The Music Went Round and Around: The Story of Musicarnival" wrote himself). If you haven't found the necessary information about the book — write in the comments, we will try to find it.

Spotting a trend in the early 1950s of staging summer theater in the round under tents, Clevelander John L. Price Jr. decided to give it a try. Consulting a local statistician to determine the geographical center of the culturally inclined population, the bulls eye fell in Warrensville Heights, a Cleveland suburb that was also the home to Thistledown Race Track. Price opened his Musicarnival there, on the grounds of the race track, with a production of Oklahoma! in the summer of 1954. The Music Went Round and Around tells the story of this unique summer theater and of its ebullient founder John L. Price Jr. Prices venture was one of the last commercial legitimate theaters established in Cleveland. In its heyday the Musicarnival had a capacity of 2500 and presented an average of eight to ten shows each summer. Theater in the round was a novelty for both directors and audiences. The backbone of the repertoire consised of such musical classics as Carousel; Kiss Me, Kate; Wonderful Town; Fanny; Paint Your Wagon; and The Unsinkable Molly Brown. Occassionally, Price tried to sneak in an opera, letting the popular shows pay for these operatic flings.

John Vacha: author's other books


Who wrote The Music Went Round and Around: The Story of Musicarnival? Find out the surname, the name of the author of the book and a list of all author's works by series.

The Music Went Round and Around: The Story of Musicarnival — read online for free the complete book (whole text) full work

Below is the text of the book, divided by pages. System saving the place of the last page read, allows you to conveniently read the book "The Music Went Round and Around: The Story of Musicarnival" online for free, without having to search again every time where you left off. Put a bookmark, and you can go to the page where you finished reading at any time.

Light

Font size:

Reset

Interval:

Bookmark:

Make

The Music Went Round and Around The Music Went Round and Around John Vacha - photo 1

The
Music
Went
Round
and
Around
The
Music
Went
Round
and
Around

John Vacha The Kent State University Press Kent and London 2004 by The Kent - photo 2

John Vacha
The Kent State University Press Kent and London

2004 by The Kent State University Press, Kent, Ohio 44242

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

ISBN 0-87338-798-8

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 2003028275

Manufactured in the United States of America

08 07 06 05 04 5 4 3 2 1

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

Vacha, John.

The music went round and around : the story of Musicarnival / John Vacha.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 0-87338-798-8 (pbk.: alk. paper)

1. Musicarnival (Warrensville Heights, Ohio)

2. Musical theaterOhioClevelandHistory.

I. Title.

ML1711.8.C57V3 2004

782.1'079'77131dc22

2003028275

British Library Cataloging-in-Publication data are available.

To the memory of

My Mother and Father:

Norma S. and Edward O. Vacha

Contents

The Music Went Round and Around The Story of Musicarnival - image 3

Preface: Welcome to
Musicarnival!

Whenever I think of South Pacific, I visualize it in the round. The Rodgers and Hammerstein characters populate a circular, nearly bare stage, symbolic of the lonely island on which the action takes place. They are surrounded on all sides by an unbroken seathe faces of the audience. I first saw South Pacific, of course, at Musicarnival.

Along with an entire generation of Clevelanders, I saw quite a few classics of the American musical stage for the first time at Musicarnival. For those of us who missed the touring New York companies at the Hanna Theatre, John Prices tent theater in Warrensville Heights more often than not gave us our next chance to catch those shows in a professional production. It first opened its flaps in 1954, during the golden age of the American musical, and kept its pennant fluttering above the Queen of the Big Tops for the following twenty-two summers. In many respects, the history of Musicarnival, especially for the production years, is the history in microcosm of that original American art form.

Although theater is probably the most collaborative of art forms, any history of Musicarnival is to a large degree a biography of its founder and guiding genius, John L. Price Jr. The full list of his credits would include a great many of the significant theatrical enterprises of his era in Cleveland, but Musicarnival is the connective tissue that binds them all together. Fortunately he was also a saver, and the John L. Price Jr. Musicarnival Archives provide as rich a documentary record as left by any local theater.

In undertaking this history of Musicarnival, then, I am indebted first and foremost to John Price for donating his archives to the Cleveland Public Library. Next, Mrs. Evelyn Ward and the staff of that institutions literature department made those materials available in record time and were unfailingly accommodating and helpful to me in my research. Retired theater librarian Herbert Mansfield provided greatly appreciated guidance through the picture and slide collection. Several people helped fill in, elucidate, and complement the printed record by sharing their memories of Musicarnival through oral interviews, including those of John Price, William Boehm, Diana Price, Jock Price, Frank Baloga, and Keith Joseph. Quotations taken from these interviews may be recognized by verbs of attribution in the present tense. I am grateful moreover to Diana Price for reviewing the manuscript in the interest of accuracy. Final responsibility for accuracy of fact as well as opinion rests, as always, with the author.

Finally, I would like to thank the editors and staff of the Kent State University Press for their encouragement in inaugurating this series on individual Cleveland theaters as an extension of our general history, Showtime in Cleveland. Thanks also to my wife, Ruta, for continued patience and support, and to my niece, Audrey Dadzitis Hopkins, for putting me right with the computer age.

And now, settle back in your canvas deck chair as the house lights dim. If youre on the aisle, you may feel a sudden stir of warm summer air as a figure races past from the back of the house and bounds confidently up onto the white stage. A young man in a crew cut and red blazer peers out at that encircling sea of faces and addresses them in a ringing tenor: Good evening, neighbors, and welcome to Musicarnival!

The Music Went Round and Around The Story of Musicarnival - image 4

During the spring of 1954 a young Navy veteran suddenly began hanging around the racetrack. His mother, Emma Price, and his wife, Connie, were not overly concerned; they knew that Johnny Price wasnt smitten by the ponies. Both had had their flings with the stage, and they knew that John was simply incurably stagestruck. Where railbirds watched thoroughbreds rounding the final turn into the homestretch, Price envisioned chorus girls breaking into their routines just beyond the oval rail.

What Price had in mind for the northwestern corner of the Thistledown grounds near the intersection of Warrensville Center and Emery Roads was a new and unique summer theater. Inspired by a recent trend on the East Coast, he planned to produce musical shows under a huge, circuslike tent. The big-top imagery would inspire, or more accurately necessitate, the adoption of another contemporary theatrical trend. In the tradition of Ringling Brothers and other circus impresarios, Price would be staging his shows on a circular platform right in the middle of his audiencein the round.

Summer theaters in themselves were nothing new in the Cleveland theatrical tradition. Nearly a century earlier, Clevelanders had begun patronizing Haltnorths Gardens on Kinsman Road. At first this was a simple German beer garden, viewed suspiciously by the earlier settlers with their New England Congregational origins. The Cleveland Leader in 1863 labeled it the citys greatest nuisance, a gathering place for pickpockets, prostitutes, and shoulder hitters (whatever that wasperhaps nineteenth-century slang for purse snatchers). By 1872, after its relocation at Willson (East 55th) and Woodland Avenue, Haltnorths had become a widely popular gathering place with spacious grounds laid out around a picturesque pond. One of its chief attractions was a theater that featured concerts and operettas by the Holman Opera Company, among others. All the popular Gilbert and Sullivan shows, from H.M.S. Pinafore to Patience, could be seen there in the 1880s and 1890s.

There was even a summer tent theater in the citys past. The Cleveland Pavilion Theater flourished in the 1880s between Wood (East 4th) and Bond (East 6th) Streets, probably in the old Lake View Park, descending from the bluffs to the railroad tracks along Lake Erie. It could accommodate up to two thousand spectators under canvas to view musical productions such as The Chimes of Normandy.

With the turn of the century, summer theatrics shifted to the Euclid Avenue Garden Theater, which opened in 1904 at Euclid Avenue and Kennard (East 40th) Street. Unlike Haltnorths, these gardens were described by a patron, Edith Moriarty, as a temperance theater. Moriarty recalled, Green grass and trees, tables, umbrellas and chairs, invited the audience, particularly the young girls on Saturday afternoons, spending their allowances on the matinee, with sodas and root beer between the acts. There was a stuccoed pavilion of Spanish Moorish design set two hundred feet back from the street, open to the air on three sides, and facing the stage on the fourth. Typical of the musical fare was Gilbert and Sullivans

Next page
Light

Font size:

Reset

Interval:

Bookmark:

Make

Similar books «The Music Went Round and Around: The Story of Musicarnival»

Look at similar books to The Music Went Round and Around: The Story of Musicarnival. We have selected literature similar in name and meaning in the hope of providing readers with more options to find new, interesting, not yet read works.


Reviews about «The Music Went Round and Around: The Story of Musicarnival»

Discussion, reviews of the book The Music Went Round and Around: The Story of Musicarnival and just readers' own opinions. Leave your comments, write what you think about the work, its meaning or the main characters. Specify what exactly you liked and what you didn't like, and why you think so.