Meme: December 14 (lol)
Dec. 17th, 2013 10:47 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
next_to_normalI'd say you can keep suggesting topics, but at the rate I'm going, I would not blame you for being skeptical that I could finish any additional posts before the end of the month. But, I mean, you can, if you want. I promise I'll write them all eventually.
This topic comes fromslaymesoftly:
Patti says: Compare musicals from back in the day to more current ones.
I think my feelings on this are probably pretty obvious, looking at the list of my favorite shows:
Into the Woods (1987)
Les Miserables (1987)
Rent (1996)
[title of show] (2006)
Next to Normal (2009)
Yeah... it's all about the modern musicals for me.
There have been many trends in musical theater, but the shift that has been most notable to me is from the "golden age" (1940s-1960s) to the contemporary era (1970s-on). When people who are only casually familiar with theater think of musicals, they're usually thinking of the "golden age" musicals, because that was the time when every mildly successful Broadway show got turned into a movie, so they're easily accessible and therefore more widely known. They're also the most popular shows for middle and high school productions. The years I was in the drama club, we did Oliver! (1960), Hello, Dolly! (1964), Bye Bye Birdie (1960), Fiddler on the Roof (1964), Once Upon a Mattress (1959), Can-Can (1953), and Man of La Mancha (1965). Meanwhile, everyone in the cast was obsessed with Rent and Les Mis.
As the genre has matured, it has gotten more experimental, in form and tone and subject matter. What appealed to us about these new shows, as middle school kids, was that they were edgy. They dealt with sex and death and poverty and had rock-inspired scores. To be fair, back in the 1940s, Oklahoma! was edgy, too. The reason the golden age stands out in musical theater history is because that's when musicals really started to be... well, coherent. The songs were tied directly to the plot, furthered the action of the story, and developed the characters. Before that, the "plot," such as it was, was mostly an excuse to string together popular standards and showstopping dance numbers with lines of chorus girls. The transition from the vaudeville/revue style shows to book musicals was as big - if not a bigger - shift as the one that happened in the latter 20th century.
We seem to be at the point, however, where the trend has shifted once again, and new original musicals are now incredibly rare. High production costs have led to an onslaught of revivals and adaptations of movies, books, plays, or "jukebox" musicals based on the collective works of pop artists. Not that it's always necessarily bad (Les Mis, of course, is based on a book, Wicked is basically fanfiction), but there is enough of a lack of originality that [title of show] explicitly comments on how difficult it is to succeed without a "recognizable commodity."
In that respect, it's not that different from the movie industry, which is all about reboots and endless sequels these days. It's, frankly, rather depressing, and it's a lot harder to build enthusiasm for a fringe musical than for an independent film, because you generally have to be in New York to see them. One of the cool things about living in DC is that, as I've mentioned, there are sometimes opportunities to see new musicals being workshopped, like Next to Normal and If/Then. I love discovering new musicals - and fortunately, there are enough that I'm still discovering older shows: a recent interest in Jason Robert Brown got me into Songs for a New World and The Last Five Years, from 1995 and 2002, respectively, both of which are close to making it onto my "favorites" list.
This topic comes from
slaymesoftly:Patti says: Compare musicals from back in the day to more current ones.
I think my feelings on this are probably pretty obvious, looking at the list of my favorite shows:
Into the Woods (1987)
Les Miserables (1987)
Rent (1996)
[title of show] (2006)
Next to Normal (2009)
Yeah... it's all about the modern musicals for me.
There have been many trends in musical theater, but the shift that has been most notable to me is from the "golden age" (1940s-1960s) to the contemporary era (1970s-on). When people who are only casually familiar with theater think of musicals, they're usually thinking of the "golden age" musicals, because that was the time when every mildly successful Broadway show got turned into a movie, so they're easily accessible and therefore more widely known. They're also the most popular shows for middle and high school productions. The years I was in the drama club, we did Oliver! (1960), Hello, Dolly! (1964), Bye Bye Birdie (1960), Fiddler on the Roof (1964), Once Upon a Mattress (1959), Can-Can (1953), and Man of La Mancha (1965). Meanwhile, everyone in the cast was obsessed with Rent and Les Mis.
As the genre has matured, it has gotten more experimental, in form and tone and subject matter. What appealed to us about these new shows, as middle school kids, was that they were edgy. They dealt with sex and death and poverty and had rock-inspired scores. To be fair, back in the 1940s, Oklahoma! was edgy, too. The reason the golden age stands out in musical theater history is because that's when musicals really started to be... well, coherent. The songs were tied directly to the plot, furthered the action of the story, and developed the characters. Before that, the "plot," such as it was, was mostly an excuse to string together popular standards and showstopping dance numbers with lines of chorus girls. The transition from the vaudeville/revue style shows to book musicals was as big - if not a bigger - shift as the one that happened in the latter 20th century.
We seem to be at the point, however, where the trend has shifted once again, and new original musicals are now incredibly rare. High production costs have led to an onslaught of revivals and adaptations of movies, books, plays, or "jukebox" musicals based on the collective works of pop artists. Not that it's always necessarily bad (Les Mis, of course, is based on a book, Wicked is basically fanfiction), but there is enough of a lack of originality that [title of show] explicitly comments on how difficult it is to succeed without a "recognizable commodity."
In that respect, it's not that different from the movie industry, which is all about reboots and endless sequels these days. It's, frankly, rather depressing, and it's a lot harder to build enthusiasm for a fringe musical than for an independent film, because you generally have to be in New York to see them. One of the cool things about living in DC is that, as I've mentioned, there are sometimes opportunities to see new musicals being workshopped, like Next to Normal and If/Then. I love discovering new musicals - and fortunately, there are enough that I'm still discovering older shows: a recent interest in Jason Robert Brown got me into Songs for a New World and The Last Five Years, from 1995 and 2002, respectively, both of which are close to making it onto my "favorites" list.
