Musicals, Act 2
Review from Monday:
- Music
- Lyrics
- Wicked vs Bloody Bloody
Big questions for today:
- What can a musical do that a regular play can't do?
- How do we analyze choreography?
- How can music, lyrics and dance say the same thing?
- How can they communicate different messages?
Your In the Heights Paper: Slight Shift
West Side Story
West Side Story (1957)
- Music by Leonard Bernstein
- Lyrics by Stephen Sondheim (remember Company)
- Book by Arthur Laurents
- Uses the storyline of Romeo and Juliet to tell a story about two rival gangs in New York City: the Jets, made up of Irish, Italian and Slavic Americans, and the Sharks, made up of Puerto Rican Americans.
- That Stephen Sondheim guy goes on to make something of himself.
Analyzing Choreography
I saw the dress rehearsal of In the Heights and
- It's awesome
- It made me decide to shift the focus of your paper
You will
- Choose two elements of theatre
- One must be music, lyrics or choreography
- Describe how they were used to create the world of the play.
- The world of the play cannot just be a description of the setting, i.e. "a corner in Washington Heights, New York City."
- It must describe the "spirit" of the place: values, priorities, conflicts, identity, emotional quality.
For example, if the setting of a musical is UT, the "world" might be
- "UT Austin, a place where football is king and everyone must bow down to the stars of the stadium."
- "UT Austin, a place where people from different cultures and regions clash and connect in their attempts to build community."
- "UT Austin, a place where students pursue quiet lives of scholarship and community service and never, ever drink. Ever."
George Chakiris, Rita Moreno and the cast of West Side Story sing "America"
When analyzing dance, think about
- Speed of movement: fast or slow, how does it change?
- Style of movement: does this look like ballet, Latin dance, hip-hop dance, etc?
- How are people dancing together, or as individuals?
- Big group dance?
- Two people dancing together?
- Solo?
- Are there specific gestures that get repeated in meaningful ways?
- You can get REALLY specific if you want.
- "Tone" of the movement
- Think of good adjectives: strong, electric, animalistic, romantic, languid, fluttering, airy, earthy
Ask yourself:
- What is the movement telling me about
- Character
- World of the Play
- Emotions and ideas of a given scene
- How does movement relate to lyrics and music?
- In the Heights closes Sat, April 19th
- Performance Paper assignment posted to BlackBoard with changes we discussed in class.
- Rough Draft due Fri, April 25th
- Final Draft due Mon, April 28th
- Next quiz Wed, April 16th on
- Water by the Spoonful
- Musical Theatre
- Hip-Hop Theatre
- Latin@ Theatre (what we get to today)
Case Study #2: Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson
Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson (2010)
- Music and Lyrics by Michael Friedman
- Book by Alex Timbers
- Originally planned on writing a musical about presidential candidates Mike Huckabee and John Edwards
- Tells the story of the birth of American populism under the 7th President, Andrew Jackson (1829-1837) by imagining him as an emo rockstar.
In this clip:
- 1: How does the speed of the music affect the emotion (and does it change)?
- 2: How does the volume affect the emotion (and does it change)?
- 3: What is the tone of the song, and what instruments do you notice?
- 4: How do the lyrics connect to the music?
The cast sings "Populism, Yea, Yea!
In the Heights: Names and Terms to Know
Why study musical theatre?
The Moneymaker:
- Broadway musicals are a multimilllion dollar for-profit industry.
- Musicals--particularly well known ones--are consistent money-makers for regional theaters.
"American" Theatre:
- The musical, as it is known today, is the first theatre genre that we have studied which many would argue originated in the United States.
- Musicals have been a particularly rich site for exploring what it means to be American.
Only in Musicals:
- Three sources of information come at the audience: lyrics, music and dance
- Elements of a musical:
- Music (self-explanatory)
- Lyrics: any line that is sung
- Book: any line that isn't sung and major events
- Each of these may be written by the same person or different people
- Choreography: dance sequences
- All three of these can offer the same message OR A DIFFERENT ONE creating layers of meaning
Stephen Sondheim, Musical Theatre God
Analyzing Music and Lyrics
Quick Review: what is the difference between the lyrics and the book?
In the Heights:
- Music and Lyrics by Lin-Manuel Miranda
- Book by Quiara Alegria Hudes
- Also described as "Conceived by Lin-Manuel Miranda"
The UT Theatre and Dance Production:
- Directed by Jerry Ruiz
- Director: "gives a production a clear stylistic point of view that integrates all elements of the performance" (The Creative Spirit)
- Music Direction by Spencer Blank
- Music Director: responsible for the overall musical quality of a production. This can include
- Orchestration: deciding what instruments will be used in a piece, and how they are used
- Vocal arrangements, vocal coaching, giving feedback to musicians, etc.
- Choreography by Toni Bravo
- Choreographer: responsible for creating all dance pieces in a production
- May also be responsible for character movement.
- Born 1930 in New York City
- Mentored by Oscar Hammerstein starting at a young age.
- Wrote lyrics to two of the most popular musicals of the 1950s
- West Side Story
- Gypsy
- Had initial Broadway success with A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (1962, music and lyrics) followed by a series of lackluster projects
- Begins collaboration with producer/director Harold Prince on a musical about contemporary marriage called Company, writes music and lyrics
- Company debuts in 1970 to huge sucsess
- Musical about contemporary middle and upper class New Yorkers, aka the people seeing the show (anti-escapist)
- Ambiguous ending very uncommon for musicals at the time
- Continues to revolutionize musicals with other shows that broke the conventions of book musicals (easy to follow plots, simple endings, etc)
- Sweeney Todd: a "horror musical" about revenge and cannibalism
- Sunday in the Park with George: a musical inspired by an impressionist painting that leaps 100 years in time
- Into the Woods: satiric look at fairy tales
Music:
- Instrumentation: What instruments are being used?
- Volume: Loud or soft? When does it get louder or softer?
- Tempo: Fast or slow? When does it speed up or slow down?
- Tone: Is the music particularly high or low? Is there an emotional quality to the music (romantic, ominous, hopeful)?
- Ask yourself:
- How does the music make me feel?
- What is happening in the music to make me feel this way?
Lyrics:
- Analyze the words being sung
- Analyze the relationship between the words and the music.
- Are they conveying the same message?
- Are the messages different?
Show Boat (The First Musical?)
Case Study #1: Wicked (You're Welcome)
Musical Theatre: A Tale as Old as Time (Kinda)
Show Boat 1927
- Music by Jerome Kern
- Lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein
- Tells the story of traveling performers on the Mississippi
- First musical to deal with serious subject matter.
- A book musical: the music and dance sequences work to communicate a coherent plot
Hammerstein later joins with Richard Rogers to write Oklahoma!
- Rogers and Hammerstein come to define the American musical:
- South Pacific (Pulitzer Prize)
- The King and I
- Flower Drum Song
- The Sound of Music
Wicked (2003)
- Music and Lyrics by Stephen Schwartz
- Book by Winnie Holzman
- Adapted from the novel by Gregory Maguire
- Tells the story of the women who will become The Wicked Witch of the West and Glinda the Good before Dorothy's arrival in Oz
In this clip:
- Group 1: How does the speed of the music affect the emotion (and does it change)?
- Group 2: How does the volume affect the emotion (and does it change)?
- Group 3: What is the tone of the song, and what instruments do you notice?
- Group 4: How do the lyrics connect to the music?
Idina Menzel and Kristin Chenowith sing "Defying Gravity"
Which of the types of theatre that we have studied involved music and dance (Hint: A lot of them)?
Origins of American Musical Theatre
- From 19th Century Europe:
- Operetta: short comic operas, often satires, performed in proscenium theaters
- Gilbert and Sullivan: British operetta composers; still performed today
- Music Hall: songs, dances, comedy sketches and burlesque performed in theaters where people could eat, smoke and DRINK at tables
- From 19th Century America:
- Minstrelsy: white performers in blackface performing comedy sketches, music and dance
- Does that sound bad? It was worse.
- African American performers also performed in minstrel shows
- While many historians have criticized African American minstrel performers for degrading themselves for money, others claim that they were able to make fun of the racism of their audiences during performances
- Vaudeville: grew up out of minstrelsy and music halls, but performed in proscenium theaters
- Included songs, dances, comedy sketches and burlesque as well as magicians, circus artists, animal acts, and other variety performers
Cabaret
Musical Theatre:
Cabaret (1966)
- Music by John Kander
- Lyrics by Fred Ebb
- Book by Joe Masteroff
- The lives of people living in Germany during the rise of Nazism are reflected in a series of numbers performed in a cabaret.
- Cabaret: incorporates comedy, music, dance and burlesque
- Performed in bars and nightclubs
- Popular in Germany in the decade before Nazism as a site of queer life and sexual freedom
- Described in book as a concept musical: music, lyrics and dance explore themes and ideas rather than advancing a linear plot
- Kander and Ebb go on to write Chicago and a number of other musical influenced by the jazz era.
Beginning today and into next week, we'll be preparing to write a performance essay.
- Written on In the Heights
- Analyze two elements of theatre
- Literary
- Technical
- Performance
- You will choose two elements of theatre
- One must be an element of music, lyrics or choreography
- Describe how they were used to create the world of the play.
- The world of the play cannot just be a description of the setting, i.e. "a corner in Washington Heights, New York City."
- It must describe the "spirit" of the place: values, priorities, conflicts, identity, emotional quality.
- Your paper should be roughly two pages or so--IN MLA FORMAT. If you consult outside sources, prepare a works cited page.
In the Heights
Musical Theatre!
The Musical!