The musical is what one may call a living art form and like all forms of art, it depicts life and our realities as we know it. The musical theatre is able to do this by telling a story or showcasing the cast’s talents through songs or the optional dialogue. Elements like the musical theatre’s emotional content and story elements are communicated through words, songs, dances and other movements, and the technical aspects all working as a whole to communicate the musical’s purpose.Specifically, these various elements that make up the musical include the score, the book (dialogue), the set which includes lighting and props, as well as costumes, actors, and the crew.
Musicals heave been performed for a long time. Although various kinds have various origins, the modern musical theatre can be performed in many different venues. The biggest productions are performed either in Broadway or the West end but musicals can be performed in many other locations. Off-Broadway shows are often the smaller, less popular shows on the way to Broadway.Amateur groups, school theater groups and musicals on tour also perform musicals in theatres and other performing spaces.
The Greeks and the Romans have been doing it for quite a long time, though. However, the art of story telling through songs, poems or both has been practiced since before antediluvian times. It is known that the Greeks had song and dance as part of their dramas as early as 5th Century B. C.
Even though many playwrights at their time used existing songs as part of their plays, Aeschylus and Sophocles composed their own.Most of the Greek dramas featured political and social satires, myth and religion, sexual humor, and anything else in between. They are either comedies or tragedies and are staged in large open areas called amphitheatres. The songs were used a means for the chorus to comment on the action. Note that it is an important part of the Greek drama for the chorus, representative of the masses to have a say on the actions of the protagonists.
They chorus is lead by the choragus. Although, in reality the Greek Drama had nothing much to do with the modern day musical, it simply goes to show that the art of show tune has been around for quite awhile.Two thousand years, in fact. Of course, the Romans copied and improved on the Greek theatre traditions.
The comedies of Plautus included song and dance routines performed with full orchestrations and the actors even put on the first tap shoes to make their steps more audible in the vast auditoriums. The shoes were called sabilla. The musical rely on varying degrees to many factors in the production. These determine the success of the musical. These elements are music, stage/set, and costumes (Kenrick).
Music Music forms a valuable part of a dramatic performance.Its functions range from being central to the whole performance, to simply filling a void. As such music for the theatre is composed to govern, enhance, or support a theatrical conception. It naturally follows different patterns than music appreciated solely on its own merit, i. e. concert music, or classical opera.
Unlike the opera, where the music defines the performance and the visualization of the whole play, in most other kinds, the music is either an accompaniment or an equal component with the rest of the elements of the performance.It was always related to something apart from itself. Music was always enrichment (operetta), a piece of the composition and atmosphere (ballet), or as a backdrop and intensifier of situations and feeling (incidental music). Music can be made to play a variety of functions. At times it be made dominant or subordinated, or as in some cases alternately emphasizing speech, song, or words. In an opera and most spoken dramas, conventions are set to create a certain kind of reality.
In these dramas, words are either wholly sung or spoken.This convention is usually kept to much of the time while in other forms such as the operetta and the musical, conventions are constantly shifted so that the artificiality of the created reality is put to the fore. However, it is largely ignored that music must be utilized in areas where no other theatrical element could provide the information, emotion, and mood, which great music can. Producers, directors, and choreographers often forget this.
Thus music left neglected is not used as an effective theatrical instrument. The classical mainstream theater music was heard mostly around the mid-17th century to about around the 1930s.Sadly great music is often misused as either compensation for a bad plot, or an unnecessary accessory to a great one. The improvements on the plots and drama in the early part of the last decade were rarely matched by appropriately improved music.
Ferruccio Busoni, a German-Italian composer, said in 1906 that most of the music of the modern times was used wrongly. Music is often a repetition of what is happening on stage, instead for of being what it should be, an interpretation of what the characters on stage really are.In 1933, the world witnessed the last play whose music was given due attention. Der Silbersee otherwise known as The Silver Sea, scored by the German Kurt Weill was the last one to use a full orchestra and chorus. After that only small -group music or prerecorded tapes.
The orchestra and chorus became the prerogative of stage musicals and films. Eventually, orchestra music became more commercialized; theatres began to rely more and more on the cliches of 19th-century music. Thus, the theatre was not able to explore newer musical developments (Theatre music).CostumesThe creation of costumes for the theatre takes quiet a long process but the end results are not only fabulous and beautiful, they also evoke a sense of realism and authenticity. Costumes are not apt to be classified according to their times.
They are neither contemporary nor historical for they exist in a style and convention innate to the theater alone. Thus its importance lies in its ability to effectively interpret the musicals concept and artistic composition. It is the costumes primary task to interpret the concept and accordingly translate it into clothing.Different concepts require different costume interpretations.
This may call for the highlighting of certain characteristics in the clothing, allowing the designer to copy or evoke period costumes or create a whole new style. Inspiration for the costumes may come from a variety of sources such as museums and galleries and other repositories of decorative creation (Stage design). It is important to remember that all the elements mentioned or not in this paper are part and parcel of the production’s success. Thus, coordination between the various aspects of theatre production is essential if it is to achieve its purpose.This need for unity is evident in the relationship between the costume sketches and with the scenic and lighting designers' schemes.
Everything about the whole company’s wardrobe from the line, shape, and color must successfully coordinate with the set and the production's lighting plot. The initial sketches are drafted and thoroughly and meticulously discussed, revised, and redrawn. At this stage it is important that all the creative minds of the production staff meet frequently to discuss all the preliminary issues of the musical.Necessarily, the staff will have to conduct several meetings to do this. The next step is for the costume designer to start canvassing for the appropriate fabrics.
This part of the process often takes a long time and often tiring. Depending on the budget of the production, the costumes can be made from a huge array of materials. However, it is not only the budget that factors in on the search for the perfect pieces of clothe, knowing where to find it is also very important. The correct weight and weave must be determined in order for the costume makers to be able to translate the designs into reality.The fabric must be easily cut and molded into the shapes and silhouettes, and they must be durable. All kinds of fabric from wool, cotton, linen, upholstery, industrial felts, rubbers, and a myriad others are available to be made into costumes.
When the right fabrics have been identified, small samples are taken of them and clipped unto the sketches. After that it is time to have the final costume renderings made. That is, if then final list of actors are selected. Many designers detail all millinery, wig work, as well as all other accessories, and other paraphernalia that the characters may use.
The management them has a bidding done by costume houses whose staff are skilled enough to create the costumes the way they want it. This is done after the final drafts are submitted to these houses. The prices are estimated and finally contracts are drawn. There are two fittings, at the second of which the characters are to try on their entire wardrobe for the final fittings. The complete outfits are presented to the designer and the cutter. After that is the dress parade done onstage ideally 10 days before the dress rehearsals to allow for revisions.
Despite the long continuing collaboration, the designer still may find himself spraying, re-dyeing, and artificially aging garments to make the stage picture perfect in every detail. After the clothes are completed, the production staff takes over (Stage design). The Set The stage or the set is another aspect of theatre production. Its importance lies in its ability to provide visual imagery as well as actual physical interface in which the actors can interact with each other. Thus, it provides more than a simply a background.
It sets the mood as much as costume and the score does and can even be determinant of the way the whole performance will look like (Dance). American stagecraft wasn’t initially as advanced as is European counterparts. The currents of innovative stagecraft eventually reached the United States. The first migration was represented by the Viennese Joseph Urban, who when he went to the Boston Opera before World War I took with him an entire atelier of draftsmen and scenic artists.
Urban moved into musical comedy and eliminated the acreage of painted vistas and box sets that had been manufactured by the stock scenic studios.The next change grew out of marginal experimental groups, such as the Provincetown Playhouse on Cape Cod in Massachusetts and the Neighborhood Playhouse in New York City, which fostered designers such as Robert Edmond Jones, Cleon Throckmorton, and Aline Bernstein. By the middle 1920s, their simple, tasteful romanticism had invaded Broadway as the groups had become commercial and as the more artistic theatre managers extended commissions to the freelance designers. The industrial designer Norman Bel Geddes entered the growing ranks of theatre artists and devised grandiose projects and engineering marvels.
With the impetus provided by ecstatic reports from Europe on the work of Reinhardt, Copeau, Meyerhold, and Tairov, American directors such as Arthur Hopkins and Philip Moeller attempted to synthesize the elements of production into a persuasive whole. The imaginative poetry of Robert Edmond Jones was balanced by the sensible craftsmanship of Lee Simonson for the Theatre Guild. Simonson as the exponent of “selective realism” was more attuned to the practicalities of the earthbound psychological problems that provided the staple fare of Broadway's “serious” drama.By the 1930s, scenery consisted of solid carpentry and tasteful furnishings that were tailored to the mood, atmosphere, and mechanical requirements of the individual play. The Urban style in musical comedy design was replaced by that of Albert Johnson—a style characterized by loose colour and calligraphic line that went well with the sharp revues that prevailed until World War II.
In staging musicals, a peculiar division persisted between the direction of the plot and comedy segments and that of the production numbers—the sumptuous song-and-dance displays under the separate supervision of a “stager” who was noted for his taste.Director-producer George Abbott surmounted this artificial departmentalization in an important step forward in the development of the rhythmic, lively musical show that became America's contribution to world theatre. The importation of Blue Blouse techniques, through direct exposure to German groups or through political theatre groups formed by ethnic immigrants, led to one sensational development in the United States. The Living Newspaper had been a relatively crude form of propaganda elsewhere.Under the Federal Theatre Project (1935) several Living Newspapers were produced, of which Triple-A Ploughed Under (1936) and One Third of a Nation (1938) are probably the best known examples. These productions were articulate documentaries of great sophistication.
So impressive were they that the model was reexported into Europe as the basis for many documentary theatre productions. Another refinement of these techniques married to the skill of Broadway-experienced professionals produced the political revue Pins and Needles (1937), which was put on to aid a strike and which ran on Broadway for 1,108 performances (Theatre).
