Company (musical)

Company is a 1970 musical comedy based on a book by George Furth with music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim. The original production was nominated for a record-setting fourteen Tony Awards and won six.

Originally titled Threes, its plot revolves around Bobby (a single man unable to commit fully to a steady relationship, let alone marriage), the five married couples who are his best friends, and his three girlfriends. Unlike most book musicals, which follow a clearly delineated plot, Company is a concept musical composed of short vignettes, presented in no particular chronological order, linked by a celebration for Bobby's 35th birthday.

Company was among the first musicals to deal with adult themes and relationships. As Sondheim puts it, "Broadway theater has been for many years supported by upper-middle-class people with upper-middle-class problems. These people really want to escape that world when they go to the theatre, and then here we are with Company talking about how we're going to bring it right back in their faces."

Company

A company is an association or collection of individuals, whether natural persons, legal persons, or a mixture of both. Company members share a common purpose and unite in order to focus their various talents and organize their collectively available skills or resources to achieve specific, declared goals. Companies take various forms such as:

A company or association of persons can be created at law as legal person so that the company in itself can accept Limited liability for civil responsibility and taxation incurred as members perform (or fail) to discharge their duty within the publicly declared "birth certificate" or published policy.

Because companies are legal persons, they also may associate and register themselves as companies – often known as a corporate group. When the company closes it may need a "death certificate" to avoid further legal obligations.

Company (Heroes)

The Company refers to a fictional covert international organization in the NBC drama Heroes. Its primary purpose is to identify, monitor and study those individuals with genetically-derived special abilities. The Company played a central role in the plot of Volume Two, during the second season of the series. It is a very notable organization in the series and is connected to several of the characters.

Founders

In season two, Kaito Nakamura revealed that there were twelve founders of the Company, and a photo of the twelve is later seen (listed below under "Group photo"); it did not include Adam Monroe, an immortal human with the ability of rapid cellular regeneration, who is described as the one who "brought them all together." The Company began sometime between January 1977 and February 14, 1977. Monroe was locked away for thirty years on November 2, 1977, concluding that he only spent about 10 to 11 months with the Company. In the first season of the show, Daniel Linderman heads the Company until his demise. He is substituted in the second season by Bob Bishop, who is implied to be the Company's financial source. However, when Sylar kills him in the beginning of Season 3, Angela Petrelli takes over. Several of the founders have children who are posthumans and who are main characters within the series.

If You're Reading This It's Too Late

If You're Reading This It's Too Late is the fourth mixtape by Canadian recording artist Drake. It was released through the iTunes Store without prior announcement on February 13, 2015, by Cash Money Records. The physical edition of the project was released by Cash Money as well as OVO Sound and Republic Records. There was a debate whether this project is a mixtape or a studio album, as it was released commercially through his record label, while Drake himself referred to the project as a mixtape.

The project received positive reviews and debuted at number one on the US Billboard 200, with three-day sales of 495,000 copies and 40,000 for online streaming credits, making this Drake's fourth time at the top of the chart. The album also broke Spotify's first-week streaming record with over 17.3 million streams in the first three days. The record was previously held by Drake himself, with his album Nothing Was the Same (2013), with 15.146 million streams in the first week.

Musical film

The musical film is a film genre in which songs sung by the characters are interwoven into the narrative, sometimes accompanied by dancing.

The songs usually advance the plot or develop the film's characters, though in some cases they serve merely as breaks in the storyline, often as elaborate "production numbers".

The musical film was a natural development of the stage musical after the emergence of sound film technology. Typically, the biggest difference between film and stage musicals is the use of lavish background scenery and locations that would be impractical in a theater. Musical films characteristically contain elements reminiscent of theater; performers often treat their song and dance numbers as if there is a live audience watching. In a sense, the viewer becomes the diegetic audience, as the performer looks directly into the camera and performs to it.

Musical films in the Western world

The classical sound era

The 1930s through the early 1950s are considered to be the golden age of the musical film, when the genre's popularity was at its highest in the Western world.

Musical theatre

Musical theatre is a form of theatrical performance that combines songs, spoken dialogue, acting, and dance. The story and emotional content of a musical – humor, pathos, love, anger – are communicated through the words, music, movement and technical aspects of the entertainment as an integrated whole. Although musical theatre overlaps with other theatrical forms like opera and dance, it may be distinguished by the equal importance given to the music as compared with the dialogue, movement and other elements. Since the early 20th century, musical theatre stage works have generally been called, simply, musicals.

Although music has been a part of dramatic presentations since ancient times, modern Western musical theatre emerged during the 19th century, with many structural elements established by the works of Gilbert and Sullivan in Britain and those of Harrigan and Hart in America. These were followed by the numerous Edwardian musical comedies and the musical theatre works of American creators like George M. Cohan. The Princess Theatre musicals and other smart shows like Of Thee I Sing (1931) were artistic steps forward beyond revues and other frothy entertainments of the early 20th century and led to such groundbreaking works as Show Boat (1927) and Oklahoma! (1943). Some of the most famous and iconic musicals through the decades that followed include West Side Story (1957), The Fantasticks (1960), Hair (1967), A Chorus Line (1975), Les Misérables (1985), The Phantom of the Opera (1986), Rent (1996), The Producers (2001) and Wicked (2003).

1776 (musical)

1776 is a musical with music and lyrics by Sherman Edwards and a book by Peter Stone. The story is based on the events surrounding the signing of the Declaration of Independence. It dramatizes the efforts of John Adams to persuade his colleagues to vote for American independence and to sign the document.

It premiered on Broadway in 1969, earning warm reviews, and ran for 1,217 performances. The production was nominated for five Tony Awards and won three, including the Tony Award for Best Musical. In 1972 it was made into a film adaptation. It was revived on Broadway in 1997.

History

In 1926, Rodgers and Hart had written a musical about the American Revolution, called Dearest Enemy. Additionally, in 1950, a musical about the Revolution had been presented on Broadway, titled Arms and the Girl, with music by Morton Gould, lyrics by Dorothy Fields, and a book by Herbert Fields, Dorothy Fields, and Rouben Mamoulian, the show's director.

Sherman Edwards, a writer of pop songs with several top ten hits in the late fifties and early sixties, spent several years developing lyrics and libretto for a musical based on the signing of the Declaration of Independence. Edwards recounted that, "I wanted to show [the founding fathers] at their outermost limits. These men were the cream of their colonies... They disagreed and fought with each other. But they understood commitment, and though they fought, they fought affirmatively." Producer Stuart Ostrow recommended that librettist Peter Stone collaborate with Edwards on the book of the musical. Stone recalled,