Show History
SOUTH PACIFIC
Background
Swept up in the post-World War II emotions of a country getting back on its feet, SOUTH PACIFIC also found its authors at a
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Recommended Bibliography
SOUTH PACIFIC
Block, Geoffrey. The Richard Rodgers Reader. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002.
Ewen, David.
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Articles & Interviews
7/1/2001 Volume 8, Issue 3, Summer
ABC SCORES SOME ENCHANTED EVENING WITH --SOUTH PACIFICAn all-new, television production of Rodgers & Hammerstein's South Pacific premiered on ABC-TV on March 26.
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10/1/2006 Volume 13, Issue 2, Fall
FAVORITE THINGSThe new DVD from Rhino of SOUTH PACIFIC IN CONCERT FROM CARNEGIE HALL starring Reba McEntire, Brian Stokes Mitchell and Alec Baldwin...
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7/1/2001 Volume 8, Issue 3, Summer
"REBA McENTIRE MAKES ""A SPECTACULAR BROADWAY DEBUT"" IN ANNIE GET YOUR GUN"An all-new, television production of Rodgers & Hammerstein's South Pacific premiered on ABC-TV on March 26, giving the network an enchanted evening as 16,000,000 viewers tuned in, and made it the most-watched event of the night
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5/1/2007 Volume 14, Issue 1, Spring
SOME ENCHANTED EVENINGCountry music superstar Reba McEntire and Broadway's Tony Award winner Brian Stokes Mitchell will reunite for three concert performances of Rodgers and Hammerstein's South Pacific
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1/1/1999 Volume 6, Issue 2, Winter
SOUTH PACIFIC: A TOPICAL MUSICAL MARKS HALF A CENTURYIt won the Pulitzer Prize, the New York Drama Critics Circle Award, and nine Tony Awards.
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7/1/1999 Volume 6, Issue 3, Summer
"STILL ""YOUNGER THAN SPRINGTIME,"" ORIGINAL CAST MARKS 50TH ANNIVERSARY OF SOUTH PACIFIC"They came from as far away as Australia and London, and from all over the United States, drawn to New York to mark an extraordinary milestone...
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4/14/2008
SOUTH PACIFIC Cast RecordingThe Lincoln Center Theater cast of Rodgers & Hammerstein's SOUTH PACIFIC is now available from Sony BMG Masterworks on
Amazon.com.
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4/14/2008
The SOUTH PACIFIC Companion BookA must-have for any fan of SOUTH PACIFIC, this is the first authorized companion to the many memorable productions of the show that span over 70 years. Order your copy on Amazon today.
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4/14/2008
SOUTH PACIFIC Gets Open RunOnly one day after SOUTH PACIFIC opened to fantastic reviews, Lincoln Center Theater announced the first Broadway revival of the show will now play an open-ended run.
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4/21/2008
Signs of the TimesOn April 21, Lincoln Center Theater raised a banner heralding their hit production of SOUTH PACIFIC. And on April 18, Bloomingdale's unveiled a SOUTH PACIFIC window display at their flagship store.
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4/24/2008
SOUTH PACIFIC Opening Night Video on MyBroadway.comVisit
MyBroadway.comto see footage from SOUTH PACIFIC's opening night on Broadway, April 3, 2008.
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5/29/2008
SOUTH PACIFIC Cast Recording Now Available; Album and Book Signing Event in NYC June 5!Order your copy of the Lincoln Center Theater Broadway Revival Cast Recording of SOUTH PACIFIC from
amazon.com today!
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5/13/2008
SOUTH PACIFIC Garners 11 Tony Award Nominations!Broadway’s first revival of SOUTH PACIFIC received 11 Tony Award nominations including Best Musical Revival, it was announced in Manhattan this morning.
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6/9/2008
South Pacific at Barnes & NobleThe cast of South Pacific and the author of The South Pacific Companion Book took the stage at Barnes & Noble in Lincoln Square to delight the audience with songs and tales from South Pacific.
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6/16/2008
Some Enchanted EveningSouth Pacific wins Best Revival of a Musical and a total of seven 2008 Tony Awards!
Click here for more.
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6/16/2008
Some Enchanted EveningSouth Pacific wins Best Revival of a Musical and a total of seven 2008 Tony Awards!
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6/25/2008
SOUTH PACIFIC Tony Winners Video on MyBroadway.comVisit
MyBroadway.com to see the reactions of the SOUTH PACIFIC Tony Winners directly following the Tony Awards ceremony on June 15, 2008.
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4/12/2009
Some Enchanted SOUTH PACIFICIn early spring there were several enchanted afternoons for SOUTH PACIFIC devotees. This year marks a half century since the film version of SOUTH PACIFIC burst onto the screen
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5/26/2009
An Interview with Liz Callaway, Cris Groenendaal and FamilyR&H Theatricals’ Charlie Scatamacchia speaks with two generations of artists about Broadway, community theatre, SOUTH PACIFIC, Rodgers and Hammerstein and the power of musicals. Read the full interview with Liz Callaway, Dan Foster, Nicholas Foster, Cris Groenendaal, Susan Anderson, and Emily Groenendaal.
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8/21/2009
SOUTH PACIFIC Launches US National TourThe seven-time 2008 Tony Award winning Lincoln Center Theater production of Rodgers & Hammerstein’s SOUTH PACIFIC, directed by Bartlett Sher, launches its National Tour in September. Produced by Bob Boyett and NETworks Presentations, SOUTH PACIFIC will be touring across America well into 2010 and beyond.
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2/19/2010
Rodgers and Hammerstein's South Pacific On Tour
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Writer's Notes
Oscar Hammerstein II, Boston PostWho creates a play?
I become more and more convinced that no writer creates anything, and no good writer tries. He knows he is an agent of the world he lives in, the world of his time and of centuries before his time.
What and who created this one musical play? The libretto derives from a book, Tales of the South Pacific, a group of stories which won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction. How did James Michener 'create' these? Out of his head? Out of a typewriter? No. It seems he had a job in the Navy, a roving job that flew him back and forth among the islands of New Hebrides and New Guinea groups. In these journeys he met people and found them in situations partly created by a world war. I say partly created because their reactions to these situations were determined by their characters, and their characters were moulded by their immediate environments and heredities and the history of religion and science and poetry up to the time they were born. Michener took actualities and realities and fictionized them into a group of stories, some amusing, some deeply romantic.
Next step in 'creation': Leland Hayward thought these stories would make a good musical play. Next step: so did Rodgers and Hammerstein. For three months Dick Rodgers, Josh Logan and I wrote nothing. We struggled with the problem of selection. There were so many stories we liked. We couldn't use them all. We finally settled on two. We borrowed a few of our favorite characters from some of the other stories, and our next job was to combine all these into one coherent narrative. It took us a year to make this adaptation. We cannot, however, say that our work was the end of SOUTH PACIFIC's creation, for the theatre is a place of complex mass collaboration, and anyone who seeks to claim the sole credit for any play is a blind egomaniac.
This play emerged as the combined work of the composer, the authors, the director, the designers, the stars and their supporting cast, and many more who must be included as sources of creation. After all these had contributed their talents and energies, the final factor in creation was the audience. An audience must apply its composite heart and mind to a play, create it as something it believes should exist or destroy it as something it believes should not exist. So when the curtain rose on the opening night, the circle was complete.
This tale of the South Pacific, taken out of the living world and crystallized into theatrical form, was offered back to the living world for approval.
from "How 'South Pacific' Was Written"
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1. Overture (Billis, Sailors, Seabees and Marines)
