Musical Theatre History

Musical theatre can be a great tool for teachers as it can help teach a variety of skills and provide information. However, musical theatre is often ignored in the classroom. This is not only a fault of people with distaste for theatre, but also lovers of theatre. As David Savran says, “And even for many devotees of the so-called straight theatre, musical theatre remains (at best) a guilty pleasure-a little too gay, too popular, too Jewish, and too much damned fun” (216). This blockage between theatre that is deemed “appropriate” to teach and musical theatre is detrimental to the theatre world and to the knowledge of students. Musical theatre can act as a bridge between many other mediums, as well as being versatile enough for even the
Despite this, however, musical theatre’s history is very cloudy and unclear. The beginnings of musical theatre have been said to have started at the end of the nineteenth to the beginning of the twentieth century, but there is an unsureness regarding whether or not that is even the right time (Donahue, Patterson 303). Were vaudeville and burlesque the first forms of musical theatre, or does musical theatre strictly begin with the creation of the American musical? This again, is up for debate and the collection of this information could lead to a research paper or group project if a teacher so planned. This mystery can be used to a teacher’s advantage, as Stacy Wolf points out, when teaching musical theatre one can start wherever they want, going as far back as Viennese opperettas or as recent as this year’s Tony Award winners (54). This knowledge of musical theatre history not only teaches about musical theatre, but also typical theatre, because students can examine how theatre has grown and evolved to branch out in many different directions. Because musical theatre is a very flexible art, students can also study the different uses of musical theatre throughout history around the world. Chinese noh theatre and the American musical both highlight music in their performances, however, each piece uses music in very different ways and to different affects, due to the
However, despite these reasons, educators still find many issues with teaching musical theatre. Wolf has many suggestions for teaching musical theatre still, like analyzing lyrics as poetry, comparing productions, and not reserving musicals as an afterthought or teaching them in a separate course, but instead integrating them into a regular theatre course (53-55). This goes to show that there are many different reasons and ways to teach musical theatre, the only one standing in the way of progress is the educator. There are many perks to musical theatre education and the knowledge and skills that can be provided can only strengthen the minds of learners. It is then left to the educators to integrate musical theatre into theatre courses in order to broaden student’s knowledge of theatre and appreciation of the very unique aspects that musical theatre brings to the