NOTE: Due to severe weather, this event has been rescheduled for Tuesday, April 11 at 1:30 p.m.
Broadway Producer David Stone discusses his career and work on the hit musicals Wicked, Next to Normal, and War Paint as part of Stacy Wolf’s spring course, “Race and the American Musical, From Minstrelsy to Hamilton,” on Tuesday, March 14. The conversation begins at 1:30 p.m. in Room 219 at 185 Nassau Street; free and open to public.
Wolf’s seminar course explores how and why race is a key component of the Broadway musical theatre. From 19th-century minstrel shows, in which African American performers “blacked up” to play black characters previously performed by whites in blackface; to the mid-20th century “golden age” musicals of Rodgers and Hammerstein, in which Asian characters were created to support a white liberal agenda; to the blockbuster Hamilton, which merges musical theatre conventions and hip hop to re-tell the story of America, performances of race and ethnicity structure the American musical’s aesthetic and political work. How did we get from there to here?
David Stone is currently represented by Wicked and War Paint. He has also produced If/Then, Next to Normal, The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, Three Days of Rain, Man of La Mancha, The Vagina Monologues, Fully Committed, Lifegame, The Diary of Anne Frank, Full Gallop, The Santaland Diaries and Family Secrets. David serves on the boards of The Broadway League and Broadway Cares/Equity Fights Aids. He also serves on the advisory boards of V-Day and Second Stage Theatre. David has lectured on theatre at NYU, Yale, Columbia and his alma mater, the University of Pennsylvania.
