Posts tagged: musicals

Musical Theater

Musicals or Musical Theater is one of the most sought after forms of Theater. It is a huge canvas that displays colors of music, song, dance, dialog and story. Every moment except for delivering a dialog, is choreographed in Musicals. Musical Theater is also one of the most famous theater form. The history of Music in Theater dates back to the early Greek theatrical traditions, continuing through Renaissance, early comedies of early 18th and 19th century, etc. The Masque theater can be hailed as the immediate ancestor of the Musicals.

However, the much needed impetuous to Musical Theater was given between the 1940 – 1950 in America, after cessation of World War II. After that, Musical Theater, took a rebirth in Oklahoma and after that did not look back. Since then it has emerged as one of the most successful forms of Dramatic Arts. Musicals as it involves music is strongly influenced by the contemporary music of the age, which lead to the emergence of  Rock musicals, pop musicals, European musicals, etc. The basic story of a musical can be both fiction or derived from social realities. More often than not it has been observed that Musicals depict a lot of social reality. They also satirize the existing social conditions.

Use of Music in Theater

Music has been used in Theater for a long time. There are some productions that do not make use of music at all and the sound effects are created either by characters back-stage or on stage. There is no hard and fast rule as far as music is concerned in theater and is totally dependent on the script of the play. If the script demands it, then its inclusion seems but natural.

Musicals and Opera are two genres of Theater in which music plays a very important role and is the basis of the production. Musicals attract a lot of crowd and are favorite among the general public who love to see the beautiful spectacle and sensational choreography. Music in other productions is used to either highlight an effect, express the emotion of a character. Sometimes it is also used depict the state of mind of a character, communicate a particular feeling to the audience. Music, song and dance helps the audience to be aware of the fact that action on stage is unreal and is crafted. Inclusion of Music has been basically borrowed from Musicals and partly from the classical mode of Drama.

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