With all of the great science fiction out there, from literature, to film, to television, why hasn’t this awesome genre made its mark on Broadway? Or even Off-Broadway, for that matter? They come around every once in awhile, as farce or some ridiculous comedy (and those are delightful, don’t get me wrong), but there hasn’t […]
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My husband, Matthew, came home the other day with a gift for me. One of those “for no reason” gifts that you just kind of happen upon. He brought me home a book, The Orphan Master’s Son, by Adam Johnson. The only reason, he says, is that it had won a Pulitzer Prize (2013). He […]
The post Siding with Pulitzer appeared first on The NewMusicalTheatre.com Green Room.
We all love a sadistic villain. We can’t get enough of those delicious creatures of the night, giving so many stories a shadow to cast over our heroes as they trek through hell and high water to claim their holy grail. Audiences eat it up. The smarter, the sicker, the more manipulative, the better. The […]
The post “Who’s That Woman?”: Ambiguous Villainy in Sondheim appeared first on The NewMusicalTheatre.com Green Room.
At a completely fundamental level, there are two kinds of participants in art: there are the artists, and there are the observers. Artists have the gift of intention, the ability to say what they want in the way that they want, for reasons clear to them. The observers also have a gift, and that is the […]
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Artists are a community, an enormous community from infinitely different backgrounds and disciplines. It always makes me incredibly sad to see someone in this community question the legitimacy of an entire subdivision of artists. I recently read some writing by a former colleague of mine, a composer in academia, a doctoral candidate, essentially declaring that […]
The post Dr. Composer appeared first on The NewMusicalTheatre.com Green Room.
I had the privilege, recently, of seeing Ryan Scott Oliver and Hunter Foster’s Jasper in Deadland. It was a great piece of writing, in words and music. Clever and funny. And it was performed in a great little venue uptown, the West End Theatre, housed in a part of the La Gree Baptist Church. It […]
The post When Theatre Gets Real — small appeared first on The NewMusicalTheatre.com Green Room.
Lin-Manuel Miranda (In the Heights) has a new show coming to The Public, and apparently it’s mind blowing. I, for one, can’t wait to see this one. A two-and-a-half-hour rapped-through musical theatre piece called Hamilton, previously known as Hamilton Mixtape, in which Lin-Manuel stars as the title character. Lin-Manuel has entered a long list of […]
The post Political Figures Are Musical Comedy appeared first on The NewMusicalTheatre.com Green Room.
I’ve noticed a sudden influx of blog posts and articles in which the authors of said pieces openly explain why they don’t tip their servers. Since this is something that affects our little music and theatre community, as many of us are, were, and will be servers, hosts, bartenders, or whatever pays for what our […]
The post Tips… the musical? appeared first on The NewMusicalTheatre.com Green Room.
In “normal” musical theatre there is a leading man and woman who eventually find love with one another. It’s not surprising, or even profound. It’s just how it’s been, forever. Straight characters are main characters. That’s not to say there aren’t plenty of other pieces that feature queer relationships (anything non-heterosexual) for lead characters, but […]
The post Being Aware Part II appeared first on The NewMusicalTheatre.com Green Room.
So, I never really had a great relationship to the most recent film adaptations of popular broadway musicals. The two exceptions were the Chicago film (2002) starring the fabulous Renée Zellweger and Catherine Zeta-Jones as the murderous duo, and The Producers (2005) starring Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick, and directed by Susan Stroman, all from the original […]
The post Movie Musicals, and the Dream Cast You’ll Likely Disagree With, but Maybe Not appeared first on The NewMusicalTheatre.com Green Room.
I recently had the opportunity to see the Metropolitan Opera’s new production of Puccini’s Tosca, starring Elisabete Matos and Sondra Radvanovsky, who share the title role. I remember getting through the first act, when one of the group of people I saw it with turned to me and said “It’s funny. It’s so beautiful, but […]
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There is always talk of the icons of musical theatre, particularly dealing with the writers. These are the ones we constantly refer to, the ones we worship as the gods of creating what American musical theatre is now, generally those who came to prominence during what is regarded as Broadway’s “Golden Age,” from “Show Boat” […]
The post The Fabulous Jeanine Tesori appeared first on The NewMusicalTheatre.com Green Room.
The internet has become a temple for musical theatre writers, performers, and audiences alike. Discovering artists and shows and music is easier than ever through things like Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, YouTube, and now websites like NewMusicalTheatre.com. In the golden-age of musical theatre, you could pretty much get a mediocre show up at a young age, […]
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Many musicals nowadays don’t utilize overtures. I miss them. Originally used to alert an audience that the performance was starting and that they should go ahead and sit the hell down, the orchestra would breeze through some of the musical themes of the show, usually completely at the leisure of whomever the orchestrator was. (Note […]
The post Shut Up and Sit Down: The “Best Overtures” Playlist appeared first on The NewMusicalTheatre.com Green Room.
As I sit trying to think of what to write next, I’m listening to Philip Glass’s opera theatre piece In the Penal Colony, after the Kafka story by the same name (really great, I highly suggest it). I find myself thinking of the difference between opera and what is generally perceived as straight up musical […]
The post The Art of the Opera-Beast appeared first on The NewMusicalTheatre.com Green Room.
I’m going to take a moment and have a seat in Bob Martin’s red chair (of course, referencing the first Broadway show I ever saw, The Drowsy Chaperone starring the incomparable and hilarious Sutton Foster as Janet Van de Graaff) and tell you a bit about my favorite musical of all time. God willing, it will […]
The post Being the Man in the Chair: Or, The Importance of the ‘Spirit Musical’ appeared first on The NewMusicalTheatre.com Green Room.
