It's Broadway Baby! The Magic and Making of the Musical

3 units

Music has always played a prominent role in the theatre, from the harps and flutes that accompanied the earliest ancient Greek dramas to the operas that proliferated throughout the 18th and 19th centuries to the Rockettes who still perform at Radio City today. But the most popular combination of music and drama continues to be the Broadway musical. In this course, we will look at some of the most popular musicals of the 20th and 21st centuries. We will watch stage and film versions of these musicals, focusing on how their deployment of song, scenery, dialogue, and dance coalesce to create a cohesive narrative, convey sociopolitical commentary, and evoke an emotional response. We will also look at the literary and historical sources of these musicals to help us understand the process by which their composers adapted them for performance. At the same time, we will consider how musicals have evolved both to include a greater diversity of race and gender identities and to engage with new cultural and media contexts. Finally, we will discover together why the musical — so often our first encounter with live performance — continues to capture our imaginations and inspire a lifelong love of the theatre. This course will focus on developing the following Literacies for Life and Career: applied problem solving; communication dexterity; creative and innovative practices; critical and interpretative skills; historical, social, and contextual understanding; integrative thinking; and systematic inquiry.