Episode 109: Public Legacy, Private Equity

Michael and Jessica reminisce about the career of Hal Prince, the producer, director and Sondheim collaborator who reinvigorated the Broadway musical and died last month at 91.

Michael says:

Whenever I’m trying to justify my enthusiasm for musical theater to my fellow designers — many of whom are like my wife and can barely abide these things — I often will say, what makes it inspiring for me is that they’re really very specific examples of total design. And someone like Prince would approach a show and would obsess over everything: the lighting, the sets, the casting, the performances, the order of the songs…

Also mentioned this week:

• Fast Company, Legendary Type Foundry Monotype Sold to Private Equity for $825 million
• Helvetica Now trailer
• Artnet, https://news.artnet.com/art-world/getty-wins-jet-ebony-archives-auction-1606687
• Images from archives and of 820 S. Michigan Avenue in New York Times, Hyperallergic, The Cut, WBEZ
• Brenna Wynn Greer, Columbia Journalism Review, Historians breathe a sigh of relief at the sale of the Ebony and Jet photo archives
• Liza Minnelli sings A Quiet Thing from Kander and Ebb, Flora the Red Menace
• Steven Levenson, Hal Prince Saved the Musical
• Jesse Green, My Summer With Hal
• Jason Robert Brown, A Portrait in Song
• Great Performances, http://www.pbs.org/wnet/gperf/harold-prince-the-directors-life-full-film/9138/
• Playbill, http://www.playbill.com/article/15-bits-of-broadway-history-you-may-not-know-about-harold-prince
• Ugly Gerry
• Amanda Kolson Hurley, City Lab, What Internet Memes Get Wrong About Breezewood, Pennsylvania

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