Prince Music Theater

The Prince Music Theater is a non-profit theatrical producing organization located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and specializing in music theatre, including opera, music drama, musical comedy and experimental forms. Founded in 1984 as the American Music Theater Festival by Marjorie Samoff, Eric Salzman and Ron Kaiserman, the Prince Music Theater is one of the Philadelphia’s premiere cultural destinations. For the first 15 years AMTF performed in various venues throughout Philadelphia. In March 1999,^[1] AMTF moved into the renovated Midtown Theater and changed its name in honor of Harold Prince,^[2] the legendary Broadway producer and director. AMTF/Prince Music Theater has produced 92 world premieres and has sent 81 productions to theaters in New York and worldwide.

Legacy

For over twenty years, the American Music Theater Festival and the Prince Music Theater helped to make Philadelphia into a major center for innovative, ambitious musical theater productions. Often working in partnership with other major regional festivals and institutions like the Brooklyn Academy of Music, the Houston Grand Opera, the Spoleto Festival and the Walker Arts Center, AMTF brought major artists and new works to Philadelphia. Works by prominent creative artists like Philip Glass, Laurie Anderson, Lee Breuer, Meredith Monk and William Bolcom were featured by AMTF, while earlier works by historic artists like Duke Ellington, Harry Partch, Kurt Weill, Cole Porter and Harold Arlen received thoughtful reconstructions. Most significantly, the Festival produced work written, composed and staged by early-career artists who have gone on to make important contributions to the field, including Julie Taymor, Elliot Goldenthal, Diane Paulus, Adam Guettel, Ricky Ian Gordon, Tina Landau, Anthony Davis, Paul Dresher, Rinde Eckert and Ted Sperling.

Works

Artistic benchmarks have included the world premieres of

• Julie Taymor, Elliot Goldenthal and Sidney Goldfarb's The Transposed Heads
• Duke Ellington's Queenie Pie
• Emily Mann, Ntozake Shange, and Baikida Carroll's Betsy Brown
• Bob Telson and Lee Breuer's Gospel at Colonus
• David Henry Hwang, Philip Glass and Jerome Sirlin's 1000 Airplanes on the Roof
• Frida, composed by Robert Xavier Rodriguez, libretto by Hillary Blecher and Migdalia Cruz
• Black Water by John Duffy and Joyce Carol Oates, based on her 1992 novel
• Adam Guettel and Tina Landau's Floyd Collins
• Philip Glass' Hydrogen Jukebox (concert version) - a staged version appeared later at the Spoleto Festival
• Harry Partch's Revelation in the Courthouse Park, staged by Jiri Zizka with choreography by George Faison^[3]
• Harold Prince's 3hree, a trilogy of one-acts with music by John Bucchino, Robert Lindsey Nassif and Laurence O'Keefe
• Chasing Nicolette by Peter Kellogg and David Friedman
• Albert Innaurato's Gemini, The Musical, with music by Charlie Gilbert
• The Green Violin

and distinguished revivals of Strike Up the Band, Love Life, St. Louis Woman, Pal Joey, Lady in the Dark, Adam Guettel's Myths & Hymns, Dreamgirls, Annie Get Your Gun, Hair and Ain't Misbehavin'.

Notable Press

• "The foremost presenter of new and adventurous music theater works in the country." TIME Magazine^[4]
• "Philadelphia's Premiere Factory." The Washington Post^[5]
• "Floyd Collins... has large ambitions, and lives up to them." The New York Times^[6]
• "Long Live The Prince!" The Philadelphia Inquirer^[1]
• "Hey, They Do Write 'Em Like They Used To... Everything old can seem new again... That is the delightful lesson of 3hree...presented in a snappily renovated former movie house, the Prince Music Theater." The New York Times^[7]
• "Spotlighting emerging musical theater artists, 3hree demonstrates that even the most talented among us need a place to begin, to wrestle with a complex, collaborative art form in manageable pieces. The show... lifts off and soars... inspiring great hope for the future of the American musical." Variety^[8]
• "Enterprising and ambitious productions" Philadelphia City Paper^[9]
• "Once in a great while, it happens in the theater that someone extends an arm into the heavens and, to our amazement, snatches down a lightning bolt. It happened last week with Revelation in the Courthouse Park, the orgy musical that capped the American Music Theater Festival's fourth annual season. With an astonishing concentration of theatrical forces, the production, which hit with earthquake force... renewed the festival's franchise on a certain kind of excitement in this town." The Philadelphia Inquirer^[10]

References

External links

• Prince Music Theater official website
• Prince Music Theater at the Internet Broadway Database, as the American Music Theater Festival
• Prince Music Theater at Cinema Treasures