Reaction to Reading Drama, Imagining Theater

The first time we read a play we must consider how  it is told and what kind performance it suggests.
-This is the exciting part for me. Understanding the context, the characters the tone. Every word from the playwright is an opportunity to tell a story.

Often varying in set descriptions, knowing something about the production conventions in use during specific periods can help you re-create how a play might have looked to its original audience...
This daunts me. It is the historic knowledge and understanding of theater that would perhaps cap or perhaps mis-inform my interpretation.

How would you light your production and what would be the effect of your decisions? Again, daunting. Requiring a technical knowledge I know I don't have. I have seen use of different colors spread throughout the stage. I'm not sure I could understand the subtly of such choices. A white stage, a red stage, a blue stage I understand the connotations implied. I'm not sure I understand why one would mix red and blue and green and what the effect therein would be.

Look for places where a role, a scene or a verbal exchange may be performed in different ways.
This is the fun part! What if Captin Hook had an Oedipus complex? What if Liza Doolittle really loved her father? What if she didn't? Putting a different spin, or a different perspective on a character or a scene allows us to renew its significance and re-invent the artistry.

History of Musical Theater Reactions

After all, culture and the arts were not "new" at any point in time. But it is clear to me now that drama with music is ever present in our history as humans. It is truly what makes us human, what refines us in civilized society.

War and Prosperity

In line with more recent history the turmoil of war and the comfort of prosperity contribute much to the development of musical drama. The first artifacts of "lyric theatre" originated from the height Athenian history. Not only a source of entertainment, but also a way to honor the gods dithyrambs were musical retellings mythology in honor of Dionysus. The era of Greek theatre was brought to a close by the Peloponnesian war in 430 B.C. It would be reborn in the splendor of Roman society. One surprising exception was during the French Revolution. A war of the cultured plebeians vs. royalty, theatre remained intact and in fact, theatre with music thrived in Paris during this time. After the Napoleonic wars, the arts in Paris renewed their strength and flourished under the renewed prosperity

Cultural Norms and Significance

In Greece these performances were available to the public for a small fee or sometimes free. As the theaters were large amphitheaters, actors wore full head masks to differentiate characters. Critics were common citizens and not necessarily "specialists."

In Roman society, rank and class being important, priority seating is introduced. On stage choruses were not used. Overt costuming was "coded" with colored wigs (black=young, white=old, red=slave), denotation of females with yellow robes and gods with tassels. The first version of "tap" shoes were used - metal chips (sabilla) were attached to footwear to make dance steps more audible. 

During the Middle Ages a divergence between Church and State resulted in musical dramas by the Catholic Church and traveling minstrels or roving troupes who performed for room and board. 

Under Napoleon III, the Exposition Universelle opened the doors for the beginning of a musical form closer to what we know today. Jacques Offenbach took full advantage of the swarm of people around Paris at this time and soon we would have the extravagant and opulent version of musical dramas accompanied by the Offenbach "bounce." 

The "Right" to Copy

With The Beggar's Opera no one thought twice of its widespread reproduction in Britain and the American colonies. A hundred years later Gilbert and Sullivan's business manager D'Oyly Carte would go to great lengths to assure G & S would recieve the proceeds from any production of Pirates of Penzance. Copyright law is truly a product of Western culture in the last hundred years related to America's entrepreneurial spirit. 

Tokens from the Past

 The genres of drama from Greek theater are woven throughout modes of entertainment musical and otherwise.
Tragedy - somber storytelling
Comedy - lighter in tone, with a happy ending, often eliminated the "fourth wall"
Satyr - reflecting raw, impetuous human behavior

Characters that started in Roman Theatre are present even in today's dramatic counterparts.
-Pseudolous: the clever slave who could outwit his Roman masters (Erin Brokovich)
-Senex: ridiculous, aging girl chaser (Married with Children - Al Bundi)
-Miles Gloriosus: vain, bragging soldier (Beauty & the Beast - Gaston)
-Mulier: respectable wife of a citizen
-Courtesan: unmarried woman without social status (My Fair Lady - Liza Doolittle)

Out of the commedia dell'arte of Italy in the 1400's we are given slapstick comedy. Simulated battles required the sound effect of a pair of hinged boards creating a loud "whack" without any actual harm to actors. This kind of special effect was reproduced until very recently and digital technology provides for the kind of staging unheard of for 500 years previously.

Black Face - During the 1790-1850s

This practice was both interesting and surprising. Its hard to imagine that while Beethoven was creating, this kind of performing was going on. Additionally, how it was viewed as completely appropriate and how much money was made off it. I can definitely see the influences it had resulting in Barbershop Quartets and it's impact on Stephen Foster's music. 

"Variety passed on two legacies to the earliest Broadway musicals: under dressed showgirls in tights and the concept of adjusting content to audience demand."

Henry Higgin's Galeatea

[HIGGINS] Eliza you're magnificent. Five minutes ago you were a mill-stone 'round my neck and now you're a tower of strength - a consort battleship. I like you this way.
[LIZA] Goodbye Professor Higgins

The myth of Pygmalion and Galatea is a simple one. Being disenfranchised by women at a local whorehouse, talented sculptor Pygmalion set out to create the perfect women through sculpture. After time the sculpture became so perfect in its details he fell in love with it. Beginning to treat it like a woman with gifts, kisses and caresses appropriate for a lover, he longed for it to be alive. Greek God, Aphrodite took pity on him and after the sacrifice of a bull, Pygmalion returned to find that Galatea had come to life. They were soon wed and blessed with offspring. Pygmalion had created his perfect match.

Shaw's Pygmalion and Lerner/Lowe's My Fair Lady make nods to the myth in its substance, but further explore the problems that can ensue from such a relationship. Higgin's obsession with his work causes him to always see Liza as an object instead of a woman. Feeling a disdain for women in general - "Women are irrational, that's all there is to that! There heads are full of cotton, hay, and rags! They're nothing but exasperating, irritating, vacillating, calculating, agitating, Maddening and infuriating hags!" Higgins ceases to see women as objects of personal care, rather more in the function they serve in his life. Mrs. Pearce, ever patient, obliging, yet strong is able to put up with his offensive behavior. His mother he sees only due to his long-term familial loyalty.

The short exchange above perfectly depicts the transformation in perspective of Higgins. Liza goes from being an object of his work - an opus or ouvre - to being a viable life partner. Higgins begins to "press at the flesh" and realize that she is a living being. It is not however, as a wife that he sees her, but of an amiable female to live with. "You and I and Pickering will be three old bachelors together instead of only two men and a silly girl." In time, perhaps he will come to see her as a more traditional spouse, but we have yet to see that kind of full admiration from Henry Higgins.

The Educational Impact of A Lifetime in Repertoire

As I read about the History of Musical Theater, early productions to which Musical Theater draws it's roots speak out to me. Works like A Beggar's Opera/Three Penny Opera and even the beginnings of Pygmalion show their educational value not only aesthetically, but also as a teaching tool for students to trace the foundations of Musical Theater and even the foundations of popular music today. 

I could see myself, as an educator, wanting to delve into a journey collectively with my students in a study of first Greek "Musical Theater" then Beggar's Opera, then the rarely performed Offenbach works including Orpheus and the Underworld, stepping to productions of Galatea to later works of Pygmalion and My Fair Lady. How much learning would go into such a journey!! Not only artistic skills such as singing, acting or movement, but also historic impacts of how these pieces related to their audiences. 

When I started this post, I thought that my question would be how to keep that kind of journey fresh to students. I can trace within my private teaching my growth as an educator through the repertoire that I teach. As my students grow, I grow with them in how I teach as well as what I teach. But in a general music situation, I see the same age/stage year after year, and I need to find a way to keep that fresh. But now I see it. That's the learning unit - to trace Musical Theater from Greek to present day. It could be made inderdiscplinary by asking students to recreate the context the type of performance space and the news events surrounding it.