What is the  [point of The] Musical?

It is nonsense to say what a musical should or should not be. It should be anything it wants to be, and if you don't like it you don't have to go to it. There is only one absolutely indispensable element that a musical must have. It must have music. And there is only one thing that it has to be – it has to be good." -  Oscar Hammerstein II

We asked this question together in our first lecture.

 Do we have more interesting answers or questions?

Musical Theatre

The Future

Is The Musical Dead?

“You have two kinds of shows on Broadway – revivals and the same kind of musicals over and over again, all spectacles. You get your tickets for The Lion King a year in advance, and essentially a family comes as if to a picnic, and they pass on to their children the idea that that's what the theater is – a spectacular musical you see once a year, a stage version of a movie. It has nothing to do with theater at all. It has to do with seeing what is familiar. We live in a recycled culture . . . I don't think the theatre will die per se, but it's never going to be what it was. You can't bring it back. It's gone. It's a tourist attraction."

- Sondheim

Musical Theatre

The Future

Theatrical professionals have fretted over this question for decades. Self-appointed experts offer all kinds of answers. However, among those who have lived and thrived in the world of the American musical, one finds a remarkable similarity of opinion. Try three of the genre's greatest songwriters

"The musical theatre will go on, and the showtune will never die. But I don't think we will ever have that special kind of American entertainment in quite the same way.”
- Jerry Herman

"History is replete with dire predictions about the future of the New York theatre . . . This time the malaise may indeed be terminal . . . Broadway cannot live without the musical theatre, but the musical theatre can live without Broadway. After all, its first home was Paris and then Vienna and then London and then New York. So changes of address are not uncommon."

- Alan Jay Lerner

"It is clear that the musical theatre is changing. No one knows where it is going. Perhaps it is going not to one place but to many. That would be healthy, I think, just as the search in itself can be healthy. . . Thus it was for Shakespeare in Elizabethan times; thus it was for writers of musicals after Rodgers and Hammerstein; and thus it will be again. In the meantime, we have no choice but to be explorers as well as practitioners, to discover and set the limitations which will provide us our own discovery and release."
- Tom Jones

~Lecture Notes

Musical Theatre

The Future

~CONTENT

Shows started to engage with themes and material which said something about society and culture of the time – dealing with race, violence, sex and love in ways that would have been unheard of 20 years earlier (and that’s just West Side Story).

Writers and (more importantly) audiences are coming to realise that there is no limit to what can be successfully musicalised in the right hands. The genre is becoming unpredictable, and we must wait with bated breath to see whatever ‘they’ come up with next.

~ Lecture Notes   What content surprised you being fodder for musicals?

Musical Theatre

The Future

Above all, stay present. : “Eyes inward, eyes outward."

Case Study: Hadestown

Hadestown 2006  Anaïs Mitchell [250+ performances]

To the world we dream about, and the one we live in now

Welcome to Hadestown, where a song can change your fate. A love story for today… and always. Hadestown intertwines two mythic tales—that of young dreamers Orpheus and Eurydice, and that of King Hades and his wife Persephone—as it invites you on a hell-raising journey to the underworld and back.

COVERAGE: LINK & LINK

Following Video: Tiny Desk Concert

Musical Theatre

The Future

~Style

In the early twentieth century, ‘showtunes’ and pop music were almost synonymous. Crossover was frequent and it was common to have songs from musicals become hits with the non-theatregoing public. Moving forward, musicals embraced Motown, disco, rock and everything in between, keeping up to date with contemporary pop sounds.

An obvious example of this change in the current musical theatre scene is Lin-Manuel Miranda, whose In the Heights and Broadway-bound Hamilton use rap and hip hop influences in ways not previously seen onstage

~ Lecture Notes   What is the most fresh sound you've heard in a musical?

Musical Theatre

The Future

That’s how we stay young these days: murder and suicide.”.

Case Study: Hamilton

Hamilton 2015  [1365 performances]

Raise a glass to freedom, Something they can never take away, No matter what they tell you” 

Hamilton is an acclaimed musical that follows the life and exploits of an oft-overlooked Founding Father.

The concept for Hamilton first came to creator Lin-Manuel Miranda when he picked up a copy of the historical biography Alexander Hamilton by Ron Chernow at an airport. After finishing the first couple of chapters, he was already imagining Hamilton’s life as a musical. The first incarnation of the stage musical was a project called The Hamilton Mixtape. On May 12, 2009, he was invited to perform music from his hit Broadway show In the Heights at the White House. Instead, he performed the first song from the Mixtape, a rough version of what would become the song “Alexander Hamilton.” After that, he spent a year working on the song “My Shot.”

Musical Theatre

The Future

~Form

 As we have it now, there is a clear and marked distinction to an audience between a play, a musical and a dance show.  When the average audience member buys a ticket, he wants to know what he is going to get: song and dance or monologues?

There is ground to be broken where the genres overlap, and stories to be told using the tools available in each branch of the art – musical theatre is already incredibly collaborative and fuses techniques and devices every step of the way.

~ Lecture Notes   Any examples of form defying tricks used in musicals you know of?

Musical Theatre

The Future

A picture is worth 1,000 words — what about a song?”

Case Study: 35mm

35mm Ryan Scott Oliver 2012

It's an anthropomorphic circus

35MM, a multimedia "musical exhibition" in which photographic images, by Oliver in collaboration with photographer Matthew Murphy inspire music and lyrics, and inversely music and lyrics inspire photographs.

Anyone familiar with the ‘concept albums’ of rock musicians will feel immediately at home with what the show is about.  Just as the present owner of the theatre in which this production plays, Andrew Lloyd Webber, began his career in musical theatre by launching shows – ‘Jesus Christ Superstar’, ‘Evita’… – in this format, so too does Oliver continue the tradition of the concept-based collection of musical numbers.

COVERAGE: LINK

Musical Theatre

The Future

Seminar

A class at university in which a topic is discussed by a teacher and a small group of students

WE ARE NOW EDUCATED CRITICS - Trust what you know, and work with it.

~Lecture Notes

QUESTIONS YOU CAN NOW ANSWER
1. What are the distinctive attributes/features of Musical Theatre?
2. Which  practitioners/practices  have  informed  the  history  of  Musical Theatre?
3. What is the political/social imperative within theatre?

Musical Theatre

The Future

Our relationships to musical theatre / Our interest in that question / Our prejudices towards musical theatre against other forms / Musicals feel different to other forms of theatre / Are musicals capable of depth? / Archetypes of musical theatre / Superficiality / How much musical work is being made outside of London? / Is it a luxury, a treat, as something that’s very spectacle driven? / Technological revolution / Dominance of the West End as final goal for musicals and how this might create a paradigm / Can we create work that doesn’t actually want to “transfer” / Are the standards higher? / People can build relationships with musicals before they see the show

Musical Theatre

The Future

What are? / Why do? 

LINK