Name John Jones | Role Author | |
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Books Our musicals - ourselves, The Songs That Fought th, All‑out for Victory!: Magazine, Reinventing Dixie: Tin Pan Alley | ||
John Bush Jones (born August 1940) is an American author, theatre director and former theatre critic and educator. Jones taught theatre for more than two decades at Brandeis University. He has written widely about musical theatre.
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Early life and education
He was born in Chicago and received an undergraduate degree in Speech (Theatre), with Distinction, from Northwestern University in 1962. He earned his Ph.D. from Northwestern in 1970.
Career
Jones reviewed drama for the Kansas City Star and taught English at the University of Kansas before joining the faculty at Brandeis University in 1978, in the Theater Arts Department. In 1996, he received the Louis Dembitz Brandeis Prize for Excellence in Teaching. At Brandeis, Jones served on the organizing committee for many years of the Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival. He directed numerous plays and musicals both at Brandeis and in professional theatre, including Ruddigore, Uncommon Women and Others and She Loves Me. He retired from Brandeis in 2001.
He is the author of many articles and has written theatre criticism for several newspapers and magazines. His books include W. S. Gilbert: A Century of Scholarship and Commentary, (New York University Press, 1970), Readings in Descriptive Bibliography (Kent State University, 1974), Our Musicals, Ourselves: A Social History of the American Musical Theater (Brandeis University Press, 2003), The Songs That Fought the War (Brandeis, 2006), and All-Out for Victory! Magazine Advertising and the World War II Home Front (Brandeis, 2009). His articles include "In Search of Archibald Grosvenor: A New Look at Gilbert's Pateince", Victorian Poetry, Vol. III (1965)); "The Printing of The Grand Duke: Notes Toward a Gilbert Bibliography", Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America, Vol. LXI (1967); and "Editing Victorian Playwrights: Some Problems, Priorities, and Principles", Theatre Survey, Vol. 17, Issue 1 (May 1976).