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Musical Theater / Musicals Index

• American Musicals - Contact information for theater professionals and their services.
• Aussie Theatre - Australia's leading theatre website - news, discussion, reviews and more.
• Broadway - Comprehensive source for Broadway shows, Broadway tickets, Off-Broadway, London theater information and tickets, theater news and more.
• Broadway Box - An uber-site for ticket discounts.
• Broadway League, The - The national trade association for the Broadway industry. Find information on current Broadway shows, theaters, and special theater-related events in New York and in 140 other cities across North America.
• Broadway Musical Home, The - From Rodgers and Hammerstein to Sondheim, award-winners to cult flops, big-budget spectacles to fringe transfers, the Broadway Musical Home strives to provide everything you ever wanted to know about the musicals, people and theatres of the Great White Way.
• Broadway World - A very cluttered, but informative site: Broadway news, plays, musicals, stars, tickets.
• California Jazz Conservatory - Innovative nonprofit organization dedicated to the study and performance of jazz and related styles of music from around the world.
• CastAlbumCollector - A comprehensive, and growing, database of cast and theater-related recordings. An online community for the musical-obsessed.
• Cole Wide Web: The Cole Porter Resource Site - Connects Cole Porter fans with information about everything from licensing Porters' songs to meeting other fans to purchasing sheet music, lyic books, and CD's.
• Cradle Will Rock, The - In January 1936, Bertolt Brecht was in New York to discuss translations of his work with, amongst others, Blitzstein's wife Eva. One evening at a party, Marc Blitzstein played Brecht a short scene he'd written about a prostitute, called Nickel Under the Foot. After hearing it, Brecht said, "Why don't you write a piece about all kinds of prostitution - the press, the church, the courts, the arts, the whole system?Blitzstein completed The Cradle Will Rock after a period of five weeks furious activity on September 2nd 1936. Some months later, the twenty-one year old Orson Welles, who had already been approached to direct the piece, was working as director of Project 891, one of the Works Progress Adminstration's Federal Theatre Project outlets. He had Blitzstein play it for his producer John Houseman, who immediately decided that this was an ideal project for the company, and put the piece into production almost immediately. The Federal Theatre Project, and its director, Hallie Flanagan, were, by then, under attack by right-wing Congressmen for the nature of some productions. The House Committee on Un-American Activities were particularly critical of what they perceived as left-wing stances taken within a welfare system provided by the Government for artists. The musical is a Brechtian allegory of corruption and corporate greed. Set in "Steeltown, USA", it follows the efforts of Larry Foreman to unionize and otherwise combat wicked businessman Mr. Mister. Further research here. Text of play's script here.
• Damon Runyon Broadway Tickets - Offers Broadway's best seats - usually reserved for VIPs or industry insiders - and the opportunity to support cancer research at the same time.
• Did He Like It? - A compendium of critical response to Broadway and Off-Broadway shows.
• Dress Circle - The shop to visit when you're in London. And, depending on the exchange rate, a great place to find foreign cast recordings.
• Everything I Know I Learned From Musicals - Musings on musical theater from Chris Caggiano. Also see The 100 Best Musicals of All Time.
• George and Ira Gershwin: The Official Web Site - Allows its visitor access to extensive information about these famous composing brothers. The site features information about the brothers' history, including a timeline of important events in their lives, as well as an anthology of films and shows with which they were involved, and information about upcoming relevant events.
• Gilbert and Sullivan Archive - Devoted to the operas and other works of W.S. Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan, and to other light operas of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, including a variety of G&S related items, including clip art, librettos, plot summaries, pictures of the original G&S stars, song scores, midi and mpeg audio files, and newsletter articles. Also see New York Gilbert & Sullivan Players pages.
• I Love NY Theater.com - The most comprehensive multilingual online source for Broadway theater tickets and information. Find New York theater tickets here.
• Givenik - When you buy tickets through Givenik, 5% goes to charity. Show choices are limited, but it's a nice way of diverting funds to a worthy cause.
• Internet Broadway Database (IBDB) - A vast storehouse of Broadway theater information. The archive provides records of productions from the beginning of New York theater until today. It includes information concerning the people involved in the theater over the years as well as statistics on the number of productions of a particular show, or the history of a certain theater.
• Internet Off-Broadway Database - Similar to the IBDB, except for Off-Broadway shows, and not quite as comprehensive.
• Jesus Christ Superstar -Original London concept recording. Jesus Christ Superstar started life as a most improbable concept album from an equally unlikely label, Decca Records, which had not, until then, been widely known for groundbreaking musical efforts. It was all devised by then 21-year-old composer Andrew Lloyd Webber and 25-year-old lyricist Tim Rice. Jesus Christ Superstar had been conceived as a stage work, but lacking the funds to get it produced, the two collaborators instead decided to use an album as the vehicle for introducing the piece, a fairly radical rock/theater hybrid about the final days in the life of Jesus as seen from the point of view of Judas. Serving as their own producers, the two creators got together more than 60 top-flight singers and musicians (including Chris Spedding, John Gustafson, Mike Vickers, P.P. Arnold, and members of Joe Cocker's Grease Band, not to mention Murray Head, Ian Gillan, and Yvonne Elliman in key singing roles).
• Kurt Weill: The Threepenny Opera with Lotte Lenya - Kurt Weill's and Bertolt Brecht's masterpiece.
• Leonard Bernstein - Allows visitors to investigate different aspects of the life of renowned composer Leonard Bernstein. Specific topics of focus include general subjects like "Scores" and "Letters" in addition to more specific categories like "Tanglewood" and "NY Philharmonic Debut." The site also includes a basic Biography of Bernstein's life, a news section, a calendar of Bernstein-related events, and a discussion forum, among other sections.
• Masterworks Broadway - Show tune information, broadway radio. Proprietors of the old Columbia and RCA labels. Also see Playbill article: Ten Reissues from Masterworks Broadway.
• MIT Musical Theatre Guild - The oldest and largest theatre organization at MIT, and entirely student-run. Formed from the merger of the MIT Gilbert and Sullivan Society, the Classical Musical Society, and the Tech Show Society in 1971, it produces a wide variety of musical theatre.
• Musical Shop - Another source for foreign cast albums. Smaller selection than Sound of Music, but better prices.
• Musical Theatre (Wikipedia) - Musical theatre is a form of theatre combining music, songs, spoken dialogue and dance. The emotional content of the piece - humor, pathos, love, anger - as well as the story itself, is communicated through the words, music, movement and technical aspects of the entertainment as an integrated whole. Since the early 20th century, musical theatre stage works have generally been called simply, "musicals". Some famous musicals include Show Boat, Oklahoma, West Side Story, The Fantasticks, Hair, A Chorus Line, Les Miserables, The Phantom of the Opera, Rent, The Producers and Wicked.
• Musical Theatre International (MTI) - One of the world's leading dramatic licensing agencies, granting schools as well as amateur and professional theatres from around the world the rights to perform the largest selection of great musicals from Broadway and beyond.  MTI works directly with the composers, lyricists and book writers of these shows to provide official scripts, musical materials and dynamic theatrical resources to over 60,000 theatrical organizations in the US and in over 60 countries worldwide.
• Musicals 101 - Cyber encyclopedia of musicals.
• Musicals - A reference for many Broadway musicals with songlists, synopses, lyrics, discussion forums, and more.
• New York City Theatre Guide -A guide to all New York theatre venues, Broadway Shows, Off-Broadway plays and entertainment listings.
• New York Times: Theater - The online theater section of the venerable paper contains a wealth of information on events happening in the New York City theater world. From reviews of debut shows to statistics on the top-grossing Broadway performances, this site is an efficient and comprehensive resource.
• Playbill - The online version of this comprehensive theater magazine offers everything from Broadway theater seating charts to articles on the history of the musical and trivia quizzes. Also, read news about your favorite Broadway stars, find out how to buy tickets online, and get box-office grosses and attendance figures for every show on Broadway.
• Really Useful Group - This site provides access to everything one might need to know about the shows, the films and the music of Andrew Lloyd Webber. Here visitors can buy tickets to shows, apply to put on their own shows using Webber's material, and purchase merchandize related to Webbers' work.
• Rodgers & Hammerstein Organization, The - Administers and promotes copyrights for stage productions, orchestral and vocal performances, and for music publishing. This official site for the organization allows its visitors to search via writer, song, or show title, for information about the individuals represented.
• Show Synopsis - Guide to musical theater.
• Sondheim - Focuses on the work of composer Stephen Sondheim. Visitors will find links to current news stories related to Sonheims' work as well as to reviews of Sonheim's material and to an index of all of Sondheim's shows among other features.
• Sound Advice - Talkin' Broadway's list of upcoming cast recordings, books, and DVDs. Updated regularly.
• StageGrade - A new-and-improved version of Critic-O-Meter. Provides useful critical consensus on Broadway and Off Broadway shows.
• Talkin' Broadway - Up to the minute news, interactive discussion, and information about Broadway and the current theatre scene in Los Angeles, Boston, Chicago and other cities across the United States.
• Theater Mania - Lots of great info on shows and theater people. Plus reviews and ticket discounts.
• Theater Talk - The Web site of a weekly television series devoted to Broadway and the American stage that is broadcast on a select number of PBS stations.
• Theatre History: Musicals - American musical theatre.
• Theatre Monkey - A independent guide to London theatre.
• Tony Awards - An excellent source for everything related to the annual awards. From news on current nominations and recent winners to archives of past winners and information on the history of the awards, this site offers access to every kind of Tony-related fact.
• Touring Broadway - The premier website devoted to the touring Broadway productions that perform in over 240 theatres across North America.  You can search for information by show, state/province/city, or theatre.  Not sure what you're looking for?  Try the search function.
• Triton Gallery - The best place to find theater posters on the Web.
• West Side Story - Dedicated to Leonard Bernstein's famous musical West Side Story. The site includes extensive archives of different productions of the play throughout history as well as information about contemporary productions and related news items. Visitors are also offered the chance to purchase West Side Story merchandize, leave messages for fellow fans on the site's message board, and browse the show's lyrics.

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