Wicked the Musical’s Groundbreaking Score – Act 1
The score of the musical sensation Wicked is groundbreaking because it brilliantly melds pop idioms with sophisticated musical theater song construction.
Category: Studying Musicals
Studying Broadway Musicals
How Musicals Make the Most of Time – A Conversation with Stephen Schwartz
Carol de Giere and Stephen Schwartz explore how musicals convey time through backstory, memories, and compressed action.
Oklahoma!
The musical OKLAHOMA! turned out to be a revolutionary piece of American theatre, instantly changing a genre into something different, something better.
Funny Girl
The most famous songs from Funny Girl, “People” and “Don’t Rain On My Parade,” are unusual in that they’re stunningly successful, and yet they contain elements that are “wrong” in a strict definition of the term.
Inspiration from “Something Rotten!”
Something Rotten! is a show is about writers struggling to get their idea seen a world where big name writers (i.e. Shakespeare!) were highest in demand.
My Fair Lady
My Fair Lady is a paradigm of many elements that make musicals work. But one unique aspect is how its leads never express romantic feelings to each other.
Scary Musicals for the Spooky Season: Shows to Listen to, Watch, or License in October
Inspired by all the “Scary Movies to Watch in October” lists that pop up around...
Writing Scary Musicals: Is it Even Possible?
Writing scary musicals for the stage is… well, scary. Take this clip from the movie Forgetting...
Musical Story Structures: a Recipe Library
A good musical requires more than just catchy songs and crafty dialogue. At its heart, a musical...
We Reside In A Renaissance of Revivals on Broadway: What Can We Study From These Shows?
We are fortunate to be able to study geniuses like Stephen Sondheim through modern musical revivals on Broadway. Take those opportunities!
26 Musical Theatre Books, Librettos, and Biographies You can Borrow for FREE (save $468)
As a musical theatre writer, your craft is both an art and a science. You need to have a strong...
Contemporary Musicals Set Outside of New York
Here are 10 contemporary, modern-day musicals set in US locations outside of New York.
How Musicals Make the Most of Time: Montage, Backstory, Memories, and Ticking Clocks
Today’s musicals journey through time with concentrated stories and employ devices like montages, backstory, and ticking clocks to keep audiences engaged.
Sweeney Todd
Stephen Sondheim, writing at the height of his powers, makes audiences anticipate almost every second of the show that something scary is about to happen.
Wicked the Musical’s Groundbreaking Score – Act 2
Robert Vieira shares his analysis of the breathtaking and complex musical score of Act II of Wicked the musical by composer Stephen Schwartz.
Little Shop of Horrors
It would be a mistake to dismiss Little Shop of Horrors as camp, because it is written with more attention to the intricacies of construction than most serious musicals. In a sense, it’s the last purely funny musical comedy to have stood the test of time; its endurance due, in part, to its solid architecture.
Cabaret
Cabaret is a seductive musical with attractive songs. But we’re well aware of the tragic implications: 1930 Berlin is a bad time and place to be Jewish.
Into the Woods
Here’s a show that’s so lean – that rushes, without pausing, to do so many things “that it’s actually tiring to watch. There’s much to be admired in Into the Woods, and cutting out fat is usually a good idea, but there’s very little to be emulated.
Studying Musicals: Jersey Boys
Using the Four Seasons catalogue, Jersey Boys tells a good, solid story with style, drama, and emotion. It uses the music as it should be used – as diegetic songs being performed by The Four Seasons. For those who fondly remember those songs, the musical probably is a nostalgic reminder of days gone by; but, even if you’re not a Four Seasons fan, Jersey Boys still is a genuine crowd pleaser and an enormously entertaining evening of well done musical theater.
Studying Musicals: West Side Story
One of the undisputed masterpieces of musical theatre, West Side Story began as an idea called East Side Story. Director/choreographer Jerome Robbins and composer Leonard Bernstein wanted to set Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet in modern dress, dealing with contemporary prejudices.
The Music Man
Meredith Willson’s The Music Man is all about transformation. Most often, the traveling huckster Harold Hill is an instrument of change.
Fiddler on the Roof
If you can only pick one model to study, just one lesson in traditional musical theatre writing,...
A Little Night Music
The first sequence in A Little Night Music is unusual in that we don’t meet any...
A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum
The funny thing about “A Funny Thing” is the majority of the songs don’t work. It terms of pace, it may be the best musical comedy libretto ever written.
A Chorus Line
A Chorus Line follows many protagonists and so must quickly introduce them in ways that delineate them and make us root for them individually.
1776
In some ways, 1776 feels very much like a straight play. Pages and pages go by in between songs, and we’re often listening to well-articulated political arguments. But 1776 is very much a musical. If at times it sounds like light opera, it’s because the composer is trying to convey, musically, a sense of the period in which it’s set.
