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working thru a bunch of classic musicals i either haven't seen or haven't watched properly since i was a kid and what's really unfortunate is when the music for them just fucking sucks
i'm not quite halfway through cabaret but no wonder people only ever do the one song from it bc the music in this is miserable
#musings#it's not at all helping that i watched this directly after fiddler on the roof bc i was like#oh well they came out at such similar times and are both period settings that r obvs wildly different#but fuck me#every song in fiddler on the roof is a fucking banger#and then. to go from that to... this#like what the fuck lmao#all the costumes and whatever are fun and the story is interesting#but every song is so fuckin painful to endure
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I only lit my menorah twice this year.
Normally Jewish ritual gives me something I can’t get anywhere else. It grounds me, it forces me to be in the moment, it gives me something to do when I’m not sure what it is I’m supposed to be doing. I light my menorah every night, most years, and I look at it, even if only for a few minutes, and I think. It brings me to something, it helps guide me. It illuminates.
And I couldn’t even manage it as empty ritual.
This year has been such a challenge for most of us, as our lives are getting changed by the moment, as we watch people who once respected disappoint us in ways we could not have imagined, as we struggle to hold onto what it is we define ourselves by, whatever that is. I don’t think I’m unique in this.
I’ve heard from a lot of people that though they have more time to do the work, they’re getting less done, that their minds are buzzing with a horde of furious bees and so nothing can get through. I am having a similar, though different, emotion. My mind is quiet. Not in the pleasant way that the prairie is quiet, where you can hear the bugs in the background and the ripple of the wind across the grass, but in the way a cell is quiet. In the way that everything is grey, and nothing seems to stick. My mind is usually so busy with a thousand connections and ideas and thoughts, and it seems now to be like pushing a ‘79 Ford Bronco up a mountain pass, but somehow less stylish.
Again, this isn’t unique to me. This is the world, right now.
I only lit my menorah twice this year.
I gave myself a thousand excuses why--I was tired, it was far after sunset, I was busy--all of them were true, and all of them were just an excuse to let something else drop. How many balls can we keep in the air, and can I still tell the rubber ones from the glass? I love to light the menorah, I love it just as much when I’m alone, maybe even more, the same as I love standing in the early morning dark of winter and whispering out my prayers.
So why can’t I strike the match, this year?
Does it all somehow feel empty? I don’t think so. I think acts of love, and faith, are never empty, when we put our heart into them. And maybe that’s it. Maybe in this time it is harder to find our heart, and our focus, and our own sense of self. It’s not the struggle, I don’t even think--I have had a harder time before, really--it’s the uncertainty. We are living all our lives as a fiddler on the roof, to steal directly from the old musical. Where can we step? When will we fall? It would be easier to know. If we know we are in the dark, we light a candle, but when you keep thinking it is only moment till daylight, but still so dark, it’s harder to know what to do.
I only lit my menorah twice this year.
I stood this morning in the dark and prayed. It’s dark but I’m still praying, even if I only get through part of it, even if all I can manage of the Modeh Ani, even if all I can do is just light that candle once. Eventually if I come back to God, God will come back to me, I’ve told myself again and again. Eventually, if I keep coming to writing, writing will come to me. If I come to work, work will come to me.
But I have to light the menorah. I have to show up, and not let myself sit in the darkness.
May we all find a light to keep us, as the year turns, and we look for the dawn.
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Meet The Apprentice! (Bio from Little Vesuvia Discord, I do not claim creation only my OC)
Basics Full name: Kavae Saab-Alamin Nicknames/aliases: Depends on outside sources, she mainly goes by her name Age and/or birthday: Mid - Late 20's Height: 5'6"
~*~
Appearance:
Large doe-like brown/black eyes; usually wide in either nerves/surprise or some form of wonder
Thick dark brown curls/waves with a mauve brown highlight/sheen. Worn usually in a long fat braid that she sticks flowers/hairpins into
Light brown skin with golden undertones, body type comparable to Portia's; she's a soft hip set girl
Outfit: Wears a lot of soft blues, cremes, and gold/yellows (dawn thematic for clothing), usually with an apron on; you never know what you’ll need it for, and a shawl for weather control
~*~
Favorite food: This is very hard because she enjoys cooking/food in general but stuffed bread treats around tea time are the best
Favorite drink: Adores teas & fruit drinks (cider, lemonades, juices)
Favorite flower: It feels traitorous to pick a favorite child but she's very partial to tree blossoms
~*~
History Place of birth: [Hidden city under construction; placeholder Hesperia] Culture is a mix of Middle Eastern / Mediterranean / Asian themes, but Moroccan is firm pin and inspiration
~*~
Family: Father: Tayyib(60's), a Oneiromanctic (Dream Divination) from a family of magicians. Loving and the caretaker of the home. Made of all heart and feelings
Mother: Nazli(60's), no nonsense heir to a textile business that's been in her family for generations, very forthright and meticulous (think Tevye & Golde from Fiddler on the Roof)
Older Sister: Rabia(40's), an absolute unit who's proudly part of her city’s guard and adores her baby sister with the intensity of a thousand suns
The amount of extended family is ridiculous but her Mother's sibling are more involved directly into the story so;
Jaleh: (F)(60's)Herbalist/Botanist who moved to Vesuvia to pursue her own dreams and ambitions; invites Kavae to move in when her[Kavae’s] health begins declining to help find any answers & aids
Zareen: (F)(50's)Scholar and Bookkeeper/Accountant who was mainly in charge of educating the family’s youngsters as they grew up, used to send Jaleh and Kavae books from time to time; until the plauge broke out and they lost contact
Bahar/Sahar: (NB)(50's) Twin Agents of trouble and chaos, left home from a young age and used to send back trinkets and gifts from their travels and adventures. They are the ones responsible for Eviathan being given to Kavae and the ones who took her to Vesuvia. Refuse to answer what they do officially but the general agreement is that it’s more than likely illegal
~*~
Occupation: Pharmacist/Herbalist(?) mainly, but you can also buy / mix your own teas and spices for cooking. The tarot reading/clairvoyance was more a smaller side income after Kavae moved in, and became larger still when Asra did.
~*~
Familiar: Eviathan, the stove salamander, who’s really not a familiar; more an oddity her Zizis’ [Bahar&Sahar] brought back as an egg, that hatched into a small, very unusual salamander.
It eats most anything really, spits flame and happily napping in the furnace of her stove. Who, when necessary, can grow to be her long range method of transportation to ease the strain on herself. Also loves cuddles.
Eviathan at it’s smallest is comparable to a bearded dragon mixed with a Salamander, and turns a bit more of a large raptor in shape when full sized.
~*~
Backstory: Kavae grew up the youngest to a happy chaotic mass of family. She had a minor weak constitution and would soak in the town hot springs often, but by the time she was 14 it was beginning to cause her serious issues.
Wanting to learn about her condition and find ways to improve her quality of life, she moved to Vesuvia to live with her Aunt. Who began teaching her the healing arts, magic and herbology. Which after over a decade of research and study, turned into a love of said crafts and wanting to help others.
She meets Asra and Muriel, others who become very dear friends, to her at least. Overall she's a very gentle, if not somewhat reckless, with giving heart but unafraid to speak her mind.
...Then the plague happens, and those traits becomes a major rift point between her and Asra. If she'd given up on herself--she can't just leave them--FINE! Go then!
For a time she tried to assist plague doctors as best she could, but for her, her Aunt, Muriel, her neighbors--well, the rest is history I suppose.
After the resurrection, she's far more soft-spoken, skittish, polite to a fault, and nearly finds it impossible to deny someone / say no. (E.g. She was unable to deny Nadia's requests/but wouldn't accept spoiling even when Nadia coaxed her due to the power dynamic)
As the arcs go on, she does start to become more of herself again, as she was and forever will be; made entirely out of gut instincts and a bleeding heart.
~*~
Personality Likes: A N I M A L S, Gardening/Flora, Cooking/Food, Reading, Little wonders(watching the sun come up, etc), little simple trinkets&jewelry, sweet things
Dislikes: Wearing herself out, Being lonely, feeling out of control/under someone else power, bullies, Being scared/made to cry, etc.
Fears: Being helpless/unable to help others or failure, True loneliness/being isolated, Pain, Unknown/Vague threats in her surroundings
Ambitions/ideals: High quality of life; pain/ache/fatigue free, Happy friends, A well-stocked kitchen able to feed them all, A garden like Portia’s & to keep a small farm of animals (hens, goats etc,) for fresh produce of both kinds, Access to Nadia’s library or any library to learn and read, Simplistic Domesticity really, a happy simple life with her loved ones.
Hobbies: She dabbles in textile crafts (Loom weaving, sewing, spinning, etc,) when she’s unable to be as mobile as she’d like. But on good day’s you can find her outside happily gardening in the dirt or gathering in the woods, or in the kitchen putting it all to use. Tho she’ll never turn down a good book or shy away from keeping the books.
Main Love interest: Muriel (Prior to which was Asra)
Friends: She likes almost everyone she meets, or at least tries to, but here’s the main plethora;
F A U S T,
Asra,
Portia,
Muriel,
Selasi,
Nadia (after extreme warming up to and post working for her),
Julian (after the spooking/theatrics wane and she sees he needs help)
Enemies: Doesn't really do enemies, but if your being cruel she's gonna do something about it...well she's certainly gonna try
~*~
Random HC’s & Trivia
Wears half moon glasses when she does book work/textile projects because she's farsighted
Still deals with her health condition as Asra wasn't aware of it and now the research has to be redone
The necklace Asra wears used to be Kavae's and she still wears the matching earrings
#the arcana game#the arcana#Kavae#Apprentice oc#My Oc#Bio Post#Master Post#General Introduction#Dollmaker Art#Original Text#Body and Outfit Ref
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5 Ways AI Will Bring Joy to Content Marketers
Content marketers have a wary relationship with artificial intelligence: will AI make them more effective at their jobs… or take their jobs away? In this piece, Yonatan Snir, CEO of CliClap, explores AI’s potential to make the lives and work of content marketers more fruitful, more enjoyable and more secure.
You’ve probably noticed the proliferation of doomsday prophets predicting that artificial intelligence has the potential to wrest the jobs out of millions of hands, including those of content marketers.
You’ve probably also run across some comforting reassurances that there will always be things that you need natural intelligence for. “Don’t worry; robots will never entirely replace human beings at their jobs!” is the thrust.
I tend to side with the yeasayers, but without any hollow platitudes. Not only should we not feel threatened by AI in marketing, but, especially in content marketing, we should be jumping with joy and opening the doors wide.
Artificial intelligence IS going to change content marketing - to our benefit. Here’s what you can look forward to.
Also Read: AI for Beginners: 5 Questions to Ask Before You Start
Content Creation: Plan more targeted, complete content that better serves your customers’ needs
A content marketer can only be as successful as her content. AI is rapidly turning into the tool that a skilled content marketer can use to increase the quality of her content a hundredfold.
Right now, all you really need is tenfold.
Rand Fishkin coined the term “10x content” three years ago, to convey the idea of content that’s ten times better than any other piece of content currently in the first page of Google search results for that topic.
The concept took the content marketing world by storm… but left precious little more moisture than there had been before. Every content marketer knows about 10x content. Every content marketer knows that searchers want 10x content. Every content marketer knows that you need 10x content to give yourself the best chance at success. And yet most content marketers still don’t create 10x content.
Why?
Because it’s HARD.
10x content succeeds because it’s better than anything out there. But that level of quality requires massive time investment, digging up and putting together myriad resources, doing original data analysis and more.
Enter AI - your new 10x best friend. Artificial intelligence excels in searching troves of data to find the right material, resources and tools. Artificial intelligence can crunch the data and highlight points that are likely to contain valuable insights. AI is Dr. Watson, doing all the legwork so that you, the skilled Sherlock Holmes, can put everything together masterfully.
Creating that initial piece of 10x content is just the first step. After all, 10x content may contain everything a searcher or customer wants and needs to know, but what if they can’t see the forest for the trees? How are they going to find the tree of knowledge among all the other trees that aren’t relevant to their current question?
Here’s where AI will be able to modify and personalize content to the user. Different perspective? Different situation? AI will be in charge of making your content more comfortable and immediately relevant to your customer.
This ability of AI is already peeking through the curtains, with tools that can take your data, pick out what is relevant and actionable for the use case at hand and present it in natural language. As the quality and level develop, these tools will draw the curtains and take center stage.
Customer Experience: Get your customers the information they need sooner, without as much involvement on their part
As we just mentioned, possessing the right content for your customers is one thing. Getting the relevant bits in front of their eyeballs at the right time is another.
How many customers have been lost because they didn’t get the content that would have helped them purchase at the time when they needed it? The world may never know… but just take the number of times you couldn’t find the information you were looking for on a commercial website and multiply that by a zillion.
When you leave it up to your customers and your content to hook up naturally, you wind up with a whole lot of near misses.
Enter AI as the perfect matchmaker.
No, really! After all, once AI got to know you from watching from your online actions, it’d be able to tell with a fair degree of certainty whether you were searching for the Matchmaker that’s the 1997 Janeane Garofalo movie, Tevye’s girls singing “Matchmaker” in Fiddler on the Roof, or Tinder.
AI is getting to the point where it will be able to tell what the next best piece of content would be for a visitor, based on the pattern of the content they’ve viewed already. That intuitive, proactive help, on the fly, is critical for conversion.
VentureBeat explains that conversion-oriented personalization “consists of three key parts: identity, content and delivery… Companies able to align these three components unlock the ability to personalize the customer experience.”
To be most effective, this goal-oriented type of content suggestion needs to happen when they’re on your site, not in an email you send them 24 hours later. It must happen in real time. VentureBeat reports that “Interest, it seems, has a half-life… after 12 hours, 70% of interest is gone. Real-time behavioral data will play an increasingly prominent role in personalization efforts across channels.”
This AI content matchmaking help has the potential to come in a whole range of passive and active forms. At the most passive end is content personalization that occurs without the visitor realizing. For example, when a visitor clicks to see “Features,” the Features page can be dynamically ordered based on the interests the visitor has shown in the actions he has taken thus far on the site.
At the most active end of AI content matchmaking are chatbots. The more data a chatbot is able to access about the user’s prior actions and intent, the more successful it will be in predicting what the user needs and reaching out successfully. Based on the conversation and interaction, the chatbot can then send the visitor directly to what he is looking for, removing friction and barriers to conversion.
Customers are starting to expect this type of UX. When done the right way, it saves them untold time and effort (not to mention the saved time and effort of your sales team).
Just make sure your chatbot can actually deal with the conversation and send visitors in the right direction. Otherwise he’s worse than a search bar, and he can leave a decidedly bad taste in a potential customer’s mouth, like this to-remain-nameless bot:
Failed chatbot unable to provide real answers to real questions
Other varieties of content suggestion, personalization and presentation lie in the middle of the active-passive range.
The litmus test for any AI is not how it gets the customer the right content at the right time, but that it does, with consistent results and conversions. Which brings us to the next reason why AI will inspire you to break out the champagne.
Lead Generation: More relevant leads (and less irrelevant ones)
Good content marketing is designed to speak to potential customers and help them to become actual customers. AI lights a fire under that content, getting it to the right eyes at the right time.
But there is nothing as frustrating to a sales team as a flood of leads… that prove to be totally irrelevant.
In an ideal world for sales, content marketing would draw in all the relevant leads… and enable the irrelevant content readers to never become leads in the first place. The content would be so clear that they would realize “Hey! This isn’t for me!” and vanish without taking up any of your sales team’s time.
Content marketing AI would facilitate that process. Based on prior content interactions, it could recognize who does not have the behavioral pattern of a relevant lead - and weed them out of the sales funnel before they become a time and energy drain for your valuable humans.
And because the more active forms of AI can bide their time and approach a visitor when it seems really, truly relevant, we won’t need all the lead gathering tools we’ve relied upon in the past, like-gated content or pop-ups. As we’ve all experienced, those lead generation tools often capture just as many irrelevant leads as relevant ones.
As a plus, your potential customers will be pretty happy (elated, even) that those pushy lead gathering methods aren’t disturbing their website visit. It’s the difference between browsing in a store where a pushy salesperson keeps getting in your way, offering you items and telling you that the blue and purple sweater you happen to be standing next to complements your teeth perfectly - and a sensitive salesperson who understands intuitively that you’re browsing and stands unobtrusively in the background until you show hints of needing assistance.
AI in marketing has the potential to be more tactful and emotionally intelligent than traditional lead gathering methods, increasing actual, warm leads while decreasing false, pushed-into-filling-out-a-form leads.
We’re not sure who will be more thrilled - your customers or your sales team.
Analytics: Evaluate the performance of your content more effectively… or let it evaluate itself
Let’s step away from the lavish parties that sales will be throwing for you and move back to your marketing team. If your marketing analysts are typical, they currently spend a large amount of time doing data analysis, which is understandable. But your top analysts spend an inordinate amount of time preparing that data for analysis - up to 30 hours a week!
Gartner chart specifying how marketing analytics resources are investing their time
Your resources are spending time on data wrangling and not on advanced modeling or content personalization. Isn’t that a waste of their talents?
As the report from the 2018 Gartner Marketing Analytics Survey phrases it, “Some of the most skilled analytics talent spends their time doing work that is necessary but not necessarily the work that will drive competitive differentiation and breakthrough insights. Analysts don’t have the time, tools or processes to execute on their vision.”
If that’s what’s happening, it’s not good news for your company’s future.
But AI may bring a light at the end of the data drudgery tunnel.
What if your marketing analytics tools were intelligent enough to take care of the data wrangling for you? What if they were intelligent enough to then do the initial analysis of the data and give you the important data points, patterns and conclusions?
Can you imagine what your top people would have the time and ability to do? Advanced modeling? Check. Deep analysis of exactly what kinds of content to create and for whom? Check.
If you have a smaller team, where content marketers double as the marketing analysts, this is even more exciting. You would have more time to brainstorm creative ideas, more time to create amazing content, more time to do the work for which most content marketers signed up to the job.
But it gets even better. An artificially intelligent system has the potential to not only do the analysis and draw conclusions, but to implement those conclusions and monitor the results. Instead of you performing the endless tweaks to your content marketing campaigns and content deployment, your self-optimizing content marketing AI system can take care of that on its own, enabling you to supervise and focus on higher level decisions and strategy.
Which brings us to the last reason to look forward to the coming of AI in marketing:
Martech Management: Overall, more high-level work and less nitty-gritty tool management
Martech has exploded in the last seven years. We’ve gone from around 150 tools to over 7000!
Illustration documenting how many MarTech tools we used to use versus how many we’re employing in our stacks today
We who were around way back when were fascinated and awed by the content marketing tools available to us. But today most of us are no longer simply dealing with content marketing tools; we’ve reached the point where content marketing stacks have become the norm.
More tools means more management. More management means less time doing the actual creative work of content marketing.
If that thought puts you in a bad mood, take heart! An artificial intelligence fully integrated into your content marketing stack will enable all the components to talk to each other without needing you to be the intermediary. AI can manage your stack for you, so all you have to do is use it, not manage it.
Also Read: How AI is Blurring the Lines Between Martech and Adtech
Herald the Coming of AI in Marketing!
Less irrelevant leads. Less wasted time. Less data drudgery. Less tool management busy work.
More successful content. More understanding and insight. More relevant leads. More time to do the creative work you love.
A superior customer experience.
Anyone of the above would be a reason for rejoicing. When you put them all together - it’s definitely time to pop open a bottle of champagne and raise a toast to AI, the newest member of your team.
Just don’t bother pouring him a glass. He’s a teetotaler.
This article was first appeared on MarTech Advisor
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Harold Prince’s new memoir, “Sense of Occasion” (Applause Books, $29.99) — a conversational chronicle and candid analysis of his many hits, seminal musicals and occasional flops — includes a last chapter on his new show, “Prince of Broadway,” which opened last night; the book and the musical were clearly timed to coincide with one another.
They have much in common. Both promise a retrospective of a 70-year career in the theater that is one of the most successful in American history. Both aim for breadth over depth — Prince offers his take on 46 of his shows in the book! — although obviously a 300-page book can go into more detail than a two and a half hour stage show. But if his new Broadway revue tries to recreate the original look and sound of popular musical numbers from shows that Prince produced or directed, his new memoir replicates his past work more directly. The first two-thirds of “Sense of Occasion” – 200 of its 300 pages – is a reprint of his 1974 memoir, “Contradictions: Notes on Twenty-Six Years in the Theatre” with updates entitled “Reflections” after each of the first 26 chapters.
Photographs and captions from the 16 pages of photographs in the book. Click to see enlarged.
“West Side Story: the original creative team. Sondheim, Laurents, Prince, Bernstein, Robbins and Griffith (seated) (Photofest)”
“Onstage at the Alvin Theatre, opening night of Company, 1970. I had just told Steven Sondheim that the New York Times review wasn’t good. (Author’s collection.)”
“Chita Riera and the prisoners sing and dance ‘Where You Are’ — my favorite number in Kiss of the Spider Woman. (Photo by Martha Swope Billy Rose Theatre Division, The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts)”
“Gloria Swanson in the debris of the once glorious Roxy Theatre. This inspired the Aronson Follies set. (Eliot Elisofan/The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images)”
“Daisy Prince taking notes from her pop during Merrily We Roll Along. (Author’s collection)”
“January 26, 1988, Majestic Theatre. Opening night bow, Phantom of the Opera. (Hope it runs!) (Author’s collection)”
“Steve wrote me a fiftieth birthday song — which was almost forty years ago. (Author’s collection.)”
The set-up can make for some odd and messy reading. In the five pages of Chapter 2, for example, he writes about “The Pajama Game,” the first show he produced on Broadway, and also his first big hit. He doesn’t tell us he won a Tony Award for it, nor that it was the first of his 21 Tony Awards, more than twice as many as anybody else has received. But he does tell us that when the musical opened on May 13, 1954, it had advance ticket sales “of only $40,000, which means it could only survive one week.” Then, however, in the page and a half that follows Chapter 2, entitled “Reflections on Chapter 2 of Contradictions,” he informs us: “The advance of the Pajama Game was $15,000, not $40,000. That means the show could have run for a performance and a half.” Not all the “Reflections” are “Corrections.” But it’s baffling why Prince (with the help of an editor if need be) couldn’t simply have reworked the original chapters. Is his old memoir sacred text, requiring exegesis rather than rewrites? Or was this simply the most efficient way for a busy or distracted man to get a product to market on time? In the last 100 pages, “Sense of Occasion” takes up where Prince left off in “Contradictions,” going show by show from 1974 to the present. There is no obvious sloppiness in the new chapters. But here too there are signs (albeit more subtle) that Prince might not have been intensely focused on the writing of this memoir. In the chapter on “Sweeney Todd,” he writes of a recent London production that “took place in a specially constructed pie shop.” This is not inaccurate, but the Tooting Arts Club production of “Sweeney Todd” began in an actual pie shop, the century-old Harrington’s, before it transferred to a “specially constructed” space, certainly worth mentioning. In the chapter on “Merrily We Roll Along,” the first of a five year string of flops, Prince writes about the end of the celebrated partnership between him and composer Stephen Sondheim, which had produced a steady stream of landmark musicals, including Company, Follies, A Little Night Music, Candide, Pacific Overtures and Sweeney Todd: “As a result of Merrily, both Steve and I, after more than a decade of successful collaboration, thought it would be advisable to sever our partnership. Had Merrily been a hit, our partnership would have been sustained. But it flopped, and we both moved on….we remain best friends…” That’s it. This is an explanation that explains little, reveals little. One wonders whether Prince’s discretion is one of the lessons learned from his first mentor, the legendary theater director George Abbott, who hired Prince in 1948 when the younger man had just graduated from college at the precocious age of 20, first to assist Abbott on a venture into television that didn’t pan out, but then keeping Prince steadily employed and advancing his career. Prince admired Abbott for keeping the theatricality restricted to the stage — remaining calm and reserved during the many crises of putting together a show. This might not have been Prince’s natural approach, but it is something he aspired to from the get-go: “I realize that my presence in the office was abrasive. I was smiley and enthusiastic and overenergized. So, recognizing that, one morning I wrote at the top of my desk calendar (for an entire year!): ‘WATCH IT!!!”
In a sense, Prince’s memoir also reflects the philosophy recently expressed by Stephen Sondheim in a different context – that directors should serve the text rather than themselves. If in “Sense of Occasion” Prince offers little in the way of personal revelation or even personal anecdote, it is full of shop talk – enough of it for a certain class of theater lover to dismiss any claims of literary infelicity as so much irrelevant quibbling.
Prince does drop in a few amusing tidbits, such as the time that a singer named Jay Harnick brought his mother to a backer’s audition for “The Pajama Game.” Prince politely complimented Jay Harnick’s mother for her son’s talent. “She said if I thought Jay was talented, I should meet her other son.” That’s how Prince met her other son, Sheldon Harnick, who would write the lyrics for the Prince-produced “Fiddler on the Roof” and “Fiorello” and for “She Loves Me,” which Prince both directed and produced.
Prince also establishes himself as opinionated, digressing on occasion to pontificate about critics and unions and ticket prices (he supports dynamic pricing), and even letting us know he doesn’t like “Hello, Dolly!” because it’s the kind of musical where “songs are utterly unmotivated” and “characters react inconsistently for laughs.”
But the greatest strength of “Sense of Occasion” rests in the insights Prince offers into the way he works. For each show he directs, he searches for what he calls a metaphor, which then helps guide him. He saw “Cabaret” as a play about civil rights, “the problem of blacks in America, about how it can happen here.” “Phantom of the Opera,” he tells us, is about our instinctive response to deformity, which is to pull back, followed by our realization that our response was irrational. To each new company of Phantom he tells a personal anecdote of his reaction when a leper shook his hand.
At 12 pages, the chapter on Phantom is the longest and most detailed — including a story I had not heard before of producer Cameron Mackintosh firing Prince from the show because he wanted an English director, causing Prince to “blurt out the f-word” and stalk off. (Prince was rehired about three weeks later.)
The greater attention on Phantom surely has something to do with its success, the longest-running show in Broadway history, which will celebrate its 30th anniversary on January 26, 2018 – four days before Harold Smith Prince turns 90 years old.
Hal Prince seems just as engaged with some of his old flops as his continual successes, and after 70 years in show business, he expresses what seems a clear-eyed perspective about his extraordinary career “Broadway is not the place to look for loyalty from the public,” he writes in “Sense of Occasion,” “and sad as that is to the ego, it is one of the best things you can say about Broadway.”
Buy “Sense of Occasion”
Harold Prince’s Memoir: “Sense of Occasion” Harold Prince’s new memoir, "Sense of Occasion" (Applause Books, $29.99) -- a conversational chronicle and candid analysis of his many hits, seminal musicals and occasional flops -- includes a last chapter on his new show, “Prince of Broadway,” which opened last night; the book and the musical were clearly timed to coincide with one another.
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