musical theatre

Musical theater traces its roots back to Ancient Greeks, who included music in their stage comedies. However, modern musical theater is an offshoot of the operetta, a type of French theater that became popular in the 19th century. Operettas were like operas, except they included speaking in-between songs and tended to stay away from darker subjects. The 1866 musical comedy The Black Crook is generally considered the first modern musical that included dancing and the use of music to continue the story. The period spanning the early 1940s to the late 1960s is considered the golden age of musical theater, with the introduction of such plays as Camelot, West Side Story, Oklahoma!, Fiddler on the Roof, The Sound of Music, Cabaret, and Guys and Dolls, but musical theater is still going strong today.

American Musical Theater has a set of distinct characteristics that set it apart from other theatrical art forms. Unlike a ballet or an opera, a musical uses song, dialogue, and dance to further a story.

Some different categories of musicals include:

Musical Comedy: "The modern conception of a musical". Musical comedy is a family friendly art form that stars high quality singers.

Operetta- A form of musical theater with positive and light subject matter.

We chose “Chim Chim Cheree” from the musical Mary Poppins mainly because it was a good memorable piece that a lot of people knew from the classic movie. As for our cover, we did a musical summary of the movie 300, which was an epic look at the Battle of Thermopylae. We chose this because each of us liked the movie and knew the story and characters well. The most challenging part of writing a musical was writing the lyrics. We pretty much wrote a poem and so the tricky part was making the syllables in each stanza match up with each other so the rhythm of the song wouldn’t be ruined. As for highlights, all of us would agree that our performances of Chim Chim Cheree were the most fun. We rehearsed well and were able to get our parts memorized easily. It wasn’t long before we actually sounded good.