Contemporary issues in the Musical Theatre

As one of the people involved in the musical theatre world, Johnathan Tweedie, said: 'musical theatre is higher form of art'. Sometimes in everyday life people can't find words to express exactly what it is that they want to say, so in the form of musical theatre they break into song and they can express themselves through movement, because I feel that singing and dancing allows a person to express themselves in many different ways and on a deeper level than words can express. Musicals aren't anything new, as the history proves its connections with ancient Greek and Roman theatre. Usually they have a light tone and also have some humour. There can be many different stories told from love stories to murder stories. In several ways, musical theatre differs in comparison to other types of stage work. A revue has song and dance but no story, while operas can resemble musical theatre, but have less dialogue plus they use classical music. It is common for a musical to use more “popular” music. Altogether, a musical is a play that includes songs, but would be able to be dramatically complete if the music was removed. So how is the musical theatre doing nowadays? Is it expanding or in recession?

There are two main centres for musical theatre in the world – it's London in the UK (West End) and New York in America (Broadway). Suddenly, in the last five or ten years there has been an enormous global explosion of the love for the musical theatre. Some of the places are really surprising – for example Korea, with huge musical theatre interest and from 55 to 100 professional productions going on any time just in the capital of Seoul. Other places are Hong-Kong, Singapore, India, Australia, China (has very recently shown a huge interest in musi...

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...only to entertain, but also to open sides of us with music that normally would be left closed. Musical theatre can be seen as riches that will keep us in pleasure and in joy for years to come. As Johnathan Tweedie mentioned in one of the interviews - 'at the moment productions are primarily focused on making money. Producers aren't prepared to take the risk. They are going with productions that they know will be successful, that people, the average public, know of, a preexisting piece of work and in England it is difficult to get new musical theatre work up and running, on a grand scale, in something like the West End'. Hopefully within the future there will be producers who are prepared to take the risk on a large, commercial scale, to give this musicals a platform on which to perform, and give this new writers the opportunity to show just what they are capable of.