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Essay history of musical theatre
Essay history of musical theatre
Evolution of opera
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How did musical theater develop from reviews, opera to what it is today?
Musical theatre originated from something called an Operetta. An Operetta is a genre of light opera, light in terms both of music and subject matter. It is also closely related, in English-language works, to forms of musical theatre.
An Opera is a performance which started in the 1590s in Italy. This form of musical theatre includes spoken word too, such as some scenery, acting, costumes and dance. Opera is most commonly performed in an Opera house with music accompaniment in the form of an orchestra.
1830, Minstrel shows. This form of theatre was entertainment in America, these types of performance contained comical sketches, variety acts, dancing and music. This was performed mainly by white people with ‘black face’ (black painted faces),
It was a poor representation of black people depicting them to be ignorant, lazy, buffoonish, superstitious, joyous and musical.
The minstrel show first began in the early 1830s but did not become popular until the 1940s. It was still a form of entertainment until 1910, p...
The power of television is strong and inevitable. Television has the ability to draw people in and view the world through a perspective one would think unimaginable. After the second world war ended in 1945, electronic sales boomed and more families started to gather around the tv at night to view widely famous television shows. Specifically, The Ed Sullivan Show was known for its plethora of celebrities and up and coming entertainers. The shows popularity was able to take a small town artist and make he or she into an enormous success, specifically, Elvis Presley who was, “something new under the Sun” (Altschuler 30). Teenagers, however, viewed the television as an escape and a look into the unknown and intriguing world of African American culture. Through the extreme recognition of The Ed Sullivan Show, the power of mass media and the fascination with African American culture, Elvis Presley’s success skyrocketed and made him one of the most famous performers of all time whose fame became an inspiration for many.
The minstrel show is considered by many as the first American form of musical theatre (Bordman, 2010). However, the tradition of minstrelsy, in various forms, dates back to well before Thomas Dartmouth Rice first jumped Jim Crow. In the sixteenth and seventeenth century, it was common for actors to darken their faces for dramatic effect, as illustrated by Shakespeare’s Othello (Strausbaugh, 2010). It could be said that minstrelsy continues to be alive and well today, in the form of reality television and hip-hop culture. While opinions on what may be considered minstrelsy today may differ, there is no denying that Rice revolutionized how the centuries old tradition of blackface was used to create a new art form, the minstrel show.
Minstrel shows were developed in the 1840's and reached its peak after the Civil War. They managed to remain popular into the early 1900s. The Minstrel shows were shows in which white performers would paint their faces black and act the role of an African American. This was called black facing. The minstrel show evolved from two types of entertainment popular in America before 1830: the impersonation of blacks given by white actors between acts of plays or during circuses, and the performances of black musicians who sang, with banjo accompaniment, in city streets. The 'father of American minstrelsy' was Thomas Dartmouth 'Daddy' Rice, who between 1828 and 1831 developed a song-and-dance routine in which he impersonated an old, crippled black slave, dubbed Jim Crow. Jim Crow was a fool who just spent his whole day slacking off, dancing the day away with an occasional mischievous prank such as stealing a watermelon from a farm. Most of the skits performed on the Minstrel shows symbolized the life of the African American plantations slaves. This routine achieved immediate popularity, and Rice performed it with great success in the United States and Britain, where he introduced it in 1836. Throughout the 1830s, up to the founding of the minstrel show proper, Rice had many imitators.
Minstrel show was an entertainment program which aired in the 19th century. The show mainly consisted of acting, music and dance with the performers dressed primarily in the
The history of African Americans in early Hollywood films originated with blacks representing preconceived stereotypes. D.W. Griffith’s 1915 film, Birth of a Nation, stirred many controversial issues within the black community. The fact that Griffith used white actors in blackface to portray black people showed how little he knew about African Americans. Bosley Crowther’s article “The Birth of Birth of a Nation” emphasizes that the film was a “highly pro-South drama of the American Civil War and the Period of Reconstruction, and it glorified the role of the Ku Klux Klan” (76). While viewing this film, one would assert that the Ku Klux Klan members are heroic forces that rescue white women from sexually abusive black men. Griffith introduced “mulatto, faithful mammy, Uncle Tom, and brutal buck” character; some were disguised as villains and obnoxious individuals. Donald Bogle’s “Toms, Coons, Mulattoes, Mammies, & Bucks” describes the brutal black buck as “big, bad niggers, sexed and savage, violent and frenzied as they lust for white flesh” (13-14). Some of the film’s most objectionable scenes depict black men trying to rape white women and Negros destroying the south however, the Ku Klux Klan is riding to the rescue. Bogle also recorded some scenes in the film that presented blacks as a joke. For instance, Bogle reaffirms that “freed Negro legislators are depicted as lustful, arrogant, and idiotic: one bites on a chicken leg, another sneaks a drink from a liquor bottle, and another removes his shows during legislative meetings” (12).
The circular area in the middle of the theatre is called the orchestra. The music of the orchestra. In ancient Greek times this area would have been used for dancing and where the ‘chorus’ would sing and perform. A ‘chorus’ was. a group of people who would play a major part in ancient plays often describing scenes much like a modern narrator.
People have dreams of what they want to do or accomplish in life, but usually musical theatre is just pushed into the non-realistic void. It isn’t a dream for me. In the past four years, musical theatre has been clarified as my reality. Musical theatre has been the only thing I have seen myself wanting to do. My first love was The Phantom of the Opera, seeing how I watched it almost every day and it was one of the first shows I saw. Of course, I started doing all of those cute shows in middle school and making a huge deal about it to my family and friends, but I have never felt so passionate about something. The minute I get up on that stage I throw away Riley for two and a half hours and it’s the most amazing feeling! Being able to tell a story
"Blackface! - The History of Racist Blackface Stereotypes." Blackface! - The History of Racist Blackface Stereotypes. N.p., n.d. Web. 29 Apr. 2014. .
Although the black performing arts population had to take the road of survival to gain self satisfaction in the theater, it was not painless. For a long time, black people were not allowed on the stage; instead black actors were mocked by white actors in "black face." Black face was a technique where white actors would physically cover their face with black paint and act as a black character. It was from this misrepresentation of the "black actor" that the names tom, coon, mulatto, mammy and buck derived. According to Donald Bogle, none of the types were meant to do great harm, although...
The 1920’s were a period or rapid growth and change in America. After World War I American’s were introduced to a lifestyle of lavishness they had never encountered before. It was a period of radical thought and ideas. It was in this time period that the idea of the Harlem Renaissance was born. The ideology behind the Harlem Renaissance was to create the image of the “New Negro”. The image of African-American’s changed from rural, uneducated “peasants” to urban, sophisticated, cosmopolites. Literature and poetry abounded. Jazz music and the clubs where it was performed at became social “hotspots”. Harlem was the epitome of the “New Negro”. However, things weren’t as sunny as they appeared. Many felt that the Harlem Renaissance itself wasn’t so much a celebration of Black culture, but rather a regurgitation of White ideals. To these African-Americans, the Harlem Renaissance represented conformity and submission to the White culture. Yet there were also those who were not even given the opportunity to be a part of the Harlem Renaissance. The poor Blacks in the South never received any of the racial tolerance up north. They lived in a world of racism and the Ku Klux Klan. The Harlem Renaissance did not redefine African-American expression. This can be seen through the funding dependence on White Americans, the continued spread of racism and the failure to acknowledge the rights of poor Southern African-Americans.
Theatre has heavily evolved over the past 100 years, particularly Musical Theatre- a subgenre of theatre in which the storyline is conveyed relying on songs and lyrics rather than dialogue. From its origination in Athens, musical theatre has spread across the world and is a popular form of entertainment today. This essay will discuss the evolution and change of musical theatre from 1980-2016, primarily focusing on Broadway (New York) and the West End (London). It will consider in depth, the time periods of: The 1980s: “Brit Hits”- the influence of European mega musicals, the 1990s: “The downfall of musicals”- what failed and what redeemed, and the 2000s/2010s: “The Resurgence of musicals”- including the rise of pop and movie musicals. Concluding
Peoples of various countries around the world during the 1940’s spent countless hours tuned into to their radio for news, entertainment, and inspiration; the popularization of television sets was given immense cursory due to this. With the rise of television came heartwarming comedies, such as The Andy Griffith Show, thrilling episodic shows, such as Twilight Zone, and prime time variety shows, such as the wildly popular Ed Sullivan Show. These variety shows featured countless up and coming rock and roll performers and catapulted them into the hearts and minds of the American public.
In this paper, I will be focusing briefly on my knowledge and understanding of the concept of Applied theatre and one of its theatre form, which is Theatre in Education. The term Applied Theatre is a broad range of dramatic activity carried out by a crowd of diverse bodies and groups.
My experience watching a live theatre performance on stage was a fascinating one, most especially since it was my first time. I attended a staged performance of “The History Boys” in a small theatre called “The Little Theatre of Alexandria” at 8:00 pm on Wednesday June 8, 2016 in Alexandria, Virginia. The overall production of the play was a resounding experience for me particularly the performance of the actors and the design of the scene made the play seem real.
Theatre as we know it now was born more than two thousand years ago and has gone through many streams until it reached the current modernity. Among these streams is the avant-garde theatre. This theatre achieved a break in the traditional theatre and became the forefront of a new experimental theatre. Therefore it is necessary to ask how this theatre started, what impact it had on society and if this type of theatre is still common in our modern era.