Preparing Kiss Me, Kate for Broadway

Abstract This chapter explores the practicalities of taking a musical from page to stage. Although Kiss Me, Kate was drafted rapidly, there were lots of “real world” matters to be settled, including fundraising, casting, staging, choreographing, and marketing the show. Where previous chapters have focused largely on the Spewacks and Cole Porter, this chapter looks at the wider collaboration that realized Kiss Me, Kate for public consumption. This includes the tensions between members of the creative team and members of the cast, the vital interventions of choreographer Hanya Holm on the staging of Kiss Me, Kate, and producer Lemuel Ayers’s vital work in giving the show a visual identity that has persisted across the marketing of the show for seventy-five years.