If the Song Doesn't Work, Change the Dress

The Illustrated Memoirs of Broadway Costume Designer Patricia Zipprodt

If the Song Doesn't Work, Change the Dress cover

If the Song Doesn't Work, Change the Dress

The Illustrated Memoirs of Broadway Costume Designer Patricia Zipprodt

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Pre-order. Available Oct 17 2024
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Description

Iconic Broadway costume designer Patricia Zipprodt (1925-1999) tells her own colorful story from a tumultuous childhood in Depression-era Chicago to Bohemian New York in the 1950s, becoming one of the 20th century's most celebrated designers.

Told with Zipprodt's acerbic humour and delicious wit, If the Song Doesn't Work, Change the Dress charts her journey to 1950s Greenwich Village, America's literary and artistic Bohemia. Tracking her career as it plunges into the developing Off-Broadway movement, and charting her personal and professional failures and successes collaborating with the biggest artists of the day - Jerome Robbins, Hal Prince, and Bob Fosse - making her one of the most recognisable, and award-winning, designers of 20th century theatre.

Published in full colour, this illustrated memoir includes pictures from Zipprodt's own archive including sketches, drawings and photographs of her work from some of the most significant shows of the 20th century, including Cabaret, Fiddler on the Roof, Chicago, and Pippin, and her work with such American theatre giants as Jo Mielziner, Irene Sharaff, José Quintero, Boris Aronson, Tony Walton, and Joel Grey, who provides a personal foreword to the memoir. Zipprodt's posthumous collaborator, theatre design historian Arnold Wengrow provides a vivid epilogue about her final battle with cancer. Drawing from her archive at the New York Public Library and Museum of the Performing Arts, he amplifies her recollections with letters, oral histories, and interviews she gave over the years to offer a portrait of an artist consistently working against the grain.

If the Song Doesn't Work, Change the Dress will delight readers interested in Broadway, ballet, opera, and the history of costume design. Her lively anecdotes about New York theatre and working in Hollywood provide a rich insight into the life and work of a celebrated female creative giant of American theatre.

Table of Contents

Preface, by Arnold Wengrow
Foreword
Chapter 1: Starting Out In Chicago
Chapter 2: College Days, A Puppet Show, A Fateful Meeting, Leaving Home for Good
Chapter 3: Getting Started In New York
Chapter 4: Making My Way on Broadway
Chapter 5: Finding Myself Off Broadway
Chapter 6: Hal and Jerry
Chapter 7: Fiddler on the Roof
Chapter 8: Cabaret
Chapter 9: Mike Nichols, The Graduate, or Why I Hate Hollywood
Chapter 10: Fosse
Chapter 11: Dealing with Addictions, Buying God's Pocket
Chapter 12: In Sum
Epilogue

Appendix Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
The Designs of Patricia Zipprodt

Acknowledgments
Index

Product details

Published Oct 17 2024
Format Hardback
Edition 1st
Extent 288
ISBN 9781350430655
Imprint Methuen Drama
Illustrations 100 colour illus
Dimensions 10 x 7 inches
Publisher Bloomsbury Publishing

About the contributors

Author

Arnold Wengrow

Arnold Wengrow was the founding artistic director…

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