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THE NEW YORK TIMES: Obituary of Jay Harnick, TheatreworksUSA Co-FounderVARIETY: If They Can Make It Here... Theatreworks sets up shop in GothamPITTSBURGH POST-GAZETTE: Review of Seussical THE NEW YORK TIMES: Review of Henry and Mudge OBITUARY: Jay Harnick, 78, Advocate of Better Theater for Children The New York Times: March 2, 2007 By Campbell Robertson
He died at the Isabella House nursing home after a long illness, said his daughter, Jane Harnick. Since Mr. Harnick helped start Theaterworks/USA in 1961, the company has toured shows in 49 states and Canada, playing to millions of children every year, and assembled a repertory of 117 musicals and plays. Mr. Harnick, who was artistic director from the company’s founding until he retired in 2000, attracted top talent, bringing in directors like Jerry Zaks, songwriters like Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty, and writers like Marta Kauffman and David Crane. The company also helped start the careers of many actors, including F. Murray Abraham and Henry Winkler. The idea for Theaterworks came about as Mr. Harnick was directing a musical for children called “The Young Abe Lincoln.” The show, which had been well received Off Broadway, quickly transferred to Broadway, where, straining under the costs of a Broadway production, it ran for only 27 performances. About a year later, Mr. Harnick and a producing partner began taking the show around to schools, and when that succeeded, they decided to form a company to produce historical plays for children. The plan was to expand children’s theater beyond shows with “dancing vegetables,” Mr. Harnick said in a 1988 interview in The New York Times. “We realize that it’s a very weighty responsibility to influence young minds,” he said. “I believe that no show is more important than the first one you see.” The company later began presenting shows in theaters rather than in schools and sending multiple shows on tour simultaneously. The repertory also expanded to include original issue-oriented plays and adaptations of children’s classics like “The Velveteen Rabbit.” Mr. Harnick continued working as a manager and a director for projects outside children’s theater, staging a 1966 production of Mozart’s “Abduction From the Seraglio” for the New York City Opera and a tour of “Fiddler on the Roof,” for which his brother Sheldon had written the lyrics. Jay Malcolm Harnick was born on June 8, 1928, in Chicago, to a dentist and a homemaker. After graduating from the University of Illinois, he moved to New York and performed in the chorus and in small roles in revues and several Broadway shows. Besides his daughter, Jane, and his brother, Sheldon, Mr. Harnick’s survivors include his wife, the actress Barbara Barrie; his son, Aaron; a sister, Gloria; and a granddaughter. If they can make it here ... Theatreworks sets up shop in Gotham Variety: November 6-12, 2006 By Mark Blankenship It's taken almost half a century, but TheatreworksUSA is trying to make it in New York. Though its offices are in Gotham, the 45-year-old producer of family theater has always been itinerant, touring original adaptations of kidlit to 49 states. But as the company prepares to launch its 45th season, staffers are ready to expand their presence in family entertainment. The first step is staking a claim Off Broadway. Theatreworks brass wants to brand the company as a destination for auds and commercial producers seeking top-drawer family work. Legitimization of a permanent New York roost is a key part of that process. Therefore, in addition to its annual tours, which mount 5,200 perfs per year of titles such as "Junie B. Jones," "If You Give a Mouse a Cookie" and "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe," Theatreworks will stage three-show seasons at Off Broadway's Lucille Lortel.
The gamble is big. New York's family legit market is dominated by the Disney juggernaut and youth-oriented presenter New Victory (which has a plum 42nd Street locale as opposed to the Lortel's more tucked-away West Village address). Why would a company already operating successfully on an $11 million budget try to muscle in with the giants? Artistic director Barbara Pasternack says, "The previous leadership was happy with presenting a weekend or two at (New York's) Promenade, in front of whatever show was installed there. We just wanted more. In New York, we realized we weren't strongly branded in the theater community. Nobody knows what we do." What Theatreworks generally does is option blockbuster youth properties and hire Gotham talent to adapt them. In the best cases, the result is a hit like "Junie B. Jones," which grossed more than $2 million last year, despite playing scores of free dates. Theatreworks also has a reputation for discovering talent, claiming alums like Henry Winkler, director Jerry Zaks and writers Bobby Lopez and Jeff Marx ("Avenue Q"). But reputation only gets you so far, especially when productions are constrained by the road. On tour, shows usually feature pre-recorded music and limited sets that thesps dismantle themselves before hopping in the van. But in a permanent New York space, things can get spruced up. The average budget for a Lortel show is around $350,000 -- three times what's spent on the road. The money covers name-brand talent, enhanced design, live musicians and services from press and marketing firms. "You're not going to get Kathleen Chalfant to get in a van and send her on a tour," Pasternack says. "But getting someone like her to do 'Great Expectations' was very much a branding choice." A Gotham profile could also increase the theater's fund-raising support. Unlike most nonprofits, 90% of Theatreworks' budget comes from ticket sales, creating greater pressure to pick sure-fire hits. "We have been reliant on box office," says managing director Ken Arthur. "The Lortel already has served as a platform to help us approach funders and say, 'With your help, we could do (more).'" Last season, for instance, Theatreworks was able to bring reps from Target to the Lortel run of "A Christmas Carol." Impressed by the show, the corporation funded several legs of Theatreworks' tours.
Both Pasternack and Arthur also want to develop a theatergoing habit in young people. This season, for instance, all Lortel tickets are $25, but it will take outside support to maintain that cap in the future. There also are more practical motives behind the theater's New York ambition. Arthur says he wants to expand earning potential on hit projects, securing Theatreworks a stake in additional revenues from transfers, cast albums or television series based on titles developed by the company. He says, "We feel it's important that we carve out enough rights so that if there is an upside on a show we will participate as a corporation." But the immediate challenge for Theatreworks is to stand out amid the family theater powerhouses. Asked if there's pressure to compete, Arthur quips, "Well, Disney could swallow us all, but I don't think it's a competition. New York has 1.2 million children in it, and you have to share." Pasternack concedes that the company has a long road to New York primacy. "We're 45 years old, but we're the new kids in a way," she says. "We have things to learn, and we have impressions to make."
Theater Review: Seuss is loose / The musical is pared down to a bouncy 80 minutes Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: January 11, 2007 By Christopher Rawson
Oh, the thinks you will find Lining up to get loose Oh, the thinks you can think When you think about Seuss. So sings "Seussical," the colorful, pulsating musical comedy adaptation of such Dr. Seuss stories as the Cat in the Hat, Horton the Elephant, the Jungle of Nool, Whoville, McElligot's Pool, Amayzing Mayzie and Gertrude McFuzz. It's the same basic Stephen Flaherty and Lynn Ahrens script and delicious score as in the 2000 Broadway version, which was then slimmed down for the national tour that played Heinz Hall in 2003. There's also a high school version. So this "Seussical" is at least the fourth variant, reduced further by New York's TheatreworksUSA to 80 fast-paced minutes. Even at that, it's about the biggest production I can recall being brought here by the Pittsburgh International Children's Theater series, with a nonstop cast of 12 singing almost two dozen songs as they careen from one whimsical, goofy, nonsensical rhyme-encrusted story to another. The variety of musical styles is a wonder, and the storytelling absolutely propulsive. It's a lot of fun with Ahrens' sprightly, nutty, ear-tickling lyrics, in which it's hard to tell Dr. Seuss' original words from her elaborations. Less can be more. This latest slimming down has cut out the whole military school, war, Solla Salew and black-light ballet sequences, plus about a quarter of the music. But there's plenty left, even better revealing the central story of Horton and the miniscule Whos, which teaches the child-friendly moral that "a person's a person, no matter how small." That's the emotional core, which Horton (kudos to actor Jeremy Zoma) shares with Gertrude, the feather-deprived bird who loves him, and JoJo, the Who child with the active, Seussian imagination. And there's no shortage of comedy, led by the irreverent narrative antics of the Cat in the Hat. Director/choreographer Marcia Milgrom-Dodge, who did the same duties last year for Pittsburgh Public Theater's "Ain't Misbehavin'," uses her cast like a kaleidoscope, keeping the show spinning briskly. Still, along with Flaherty's bouncy score, what I like best is when the stories narrow down. I guess "no matter how small" applies to a musical, too.
Theatre Review: Henry and Mudge By Laurel Graeber TheatreworksUSA’s latest production is full of luxurious romps in the grass, tender caresses and big, wet kisses. But none of it is inappropriate for children. The hunka hunka burnin’ love behind these displays is Mudge, the canine half of the boy-and-his-dog duo Cynthia Rylant made famous in her “Henry and Mudge” books. Theatreworks/USA is a 501 (C) (3) not-for-profit charitable and educational organization. All gifts are tax deductible to the fullest extent of the law.
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Jay Harnick, the founder of Theaterworks/USA, the nation’s largest touring children’s theater company, died on Tuesday in Manhattan. He was 78.
The company had a Lortel run last year, presenting more lavish versions of road hits like "A Christmas Carol" and "Sarah, Plain and Tall." But starting with the Nov. 16 bow of "Great Expectations," starring Kathleen Chalfant and Christian Campbell, the Lortel will be used solely for premieres. 
Asked about her fund-raising goals, Pasternack says, "It would be nice to do things in New York that are not always title driven, to be able to go to a fantastic playwright and say, 'What do you want to write?' But I don't know if that will ever be a possibility." 
Joseph Morales, a young adult actor, makes a winning Henry, and Todd Buonopane — this is no insult — is quite a dog as Mudge. Mr. Buonopane, who began his Broadway career as an understudy in “The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee,” faces far greater challenges here than polysyllabic words; as a dumb animal (Henry’s mother feels this applies in every sense of the phrase), Mudge is ignorant of the entire language. Kait Kerrigan, who wrote the show’s book and the lyrics for Brian Lowdermilk’s ebullient score, provides very funny monologues of Mudge’s thoughts and offers a wry take on a dog’s perspective: when first given commands, Mudge just grins, offers a hand (or paw) and cluelessly says, “Hi.” (This will be immediately recognizable to anyone who has been around Labrador retrievers.) And Mr. Buonopane is very convincing. Jennifer Cody is also delightfully feisty as Annie, who threatens to steal Mudge’s heart when she pays a visit.