Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about the intersection of theater and rap. You might be surprised to hear this, if you know me in real life, because I don’t listen to popular rap at all or know very much about it. But the annals of theater news provide a long list of possible reasons […]
The post Breaking Into Verse: The Origins of Musical Theater Rap appeared first on The NewMusicalTheatre.com Green Room.
A couple of weeks ago two show announcements came on the same day that would have had the writers of Forbidden Broadway rubbing their hands together with glee. In a West End market currently saturated with revivals, and original productions of 1980s ‘mega-musicals,’ it was revealed that Evita (1978) and Cats (1981), both hits by British […]
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One of the greatest problems in constructing a musical is the structure. Despite having the topic, plot and characters all in place, the hardest decision seems to be in what order to let it unravel. Traditional musical theatre post-Oklahoma! developed a fairly rigid structure that few book writers strayed from – the reason mainly being, […]
The post Interval Issues: A show of two halves appeared first on The NewMusicalTheatre.com Green Room.
Last week, in an attempt to make small talk, a visiting friend of my parents’ announced to me that as of this week, there would be no straight plays running on Broadway. Sounds crazy, right? First of all, it’s not so crazy. It has happened before, at least once in my lifetime and more than […]
The post No Plays on Broadway?: Why The Lack of Plays is Bad News for Musicals appeared first on The NewMusicalTheatre.com Green Room.
This past season, thirteen new musicals opened on Broadway. Six of them closed before the Tonys, and of those six, only two received any nominations: A Night with Janis Joplin and The Bridges of Madison County. There is a pattern present in the Tony nomination and voting process that routinely favors still-running shows over those […]
The post Can A Closed Show Still Win? A Look at Tony Voting appeared first on The NewMusicalTheatre.com Green Room.
The last three shows that I saw on Broadway, Violet, The Bridges of Madison County, and Hedwig and the Angry Inch, have some interesting things in common. All three were produced on Broadway this season for the first time. All three feature daring and beautiful scores, written for the musical stage by important musical theatre […]
The post We Were That Kid: Tony Eligibility Rulings and Why They Matter appeared first on The NewMusicalTheatre.com Green Room.
A few years ago I had a ticket to attend a panel discussion with Stephen Schwartz and a couple of German ‘musical theatre experts’ in Berlin. I had the flu and wasn’t feeling all that well, but I went anyway – because, well: Stephen Schwartz. The space where the discussion was held was the set of […]
The post How We Do It in Germany – an Introduction appeared first on The NewMusicalTheatre.com Green Room.
One week ago today, the cast of the recent Pulitzer Prize finalist Fun Home, along with its writers, Lisa Kron and Jeanine Tesori, and Alison Bechdel, author of the musical’s graphic novel source material, traveled to Charleston, South Carolina to present a concert version of the show. Recently, the College of Charleston lost a significant portion […]
The post “I Know You”: Fun Home in Charleston and Theater as Activism appeared first on The NewMusicalTheatre.com Green Room.
Recently Playbill asked their Twitter followers who they would want most to play the King of Siam in the forthcoming Broadway revival of The King and I, and posted what one presumes were the nine most popular responses on their site. Of those nine, four of the profiled actors were not Asian. Of those four, […]
The post On Kings, Kims, Coalhouses, Capulets and Consideration 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 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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This weekend I was lucky enough to see the London premiere of Frank Wildhorn’s 2009 musical Bonnie & Clyde in an inventive production by the musical theatre students at Arts Ed – one of London’s top drama schools. Despite holding amateur rights, the production was as professional as many fringe musicals, thanks in the main to […]
The post That Frank! The Shadow of Flop Musicals appeared first on The NewMusicalTheatre.com Green Room.
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.
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.
It is ten years ago. You are reading The New York Times and you come across this sentence about the latest musical to open on Broadway: the show “does not, alas, speak hopefully for the future of the Broadway musical.” And if somehow that piece – along with the production’s other scathing reviews – is […]
The post You’re Gonna Be Populist appeared first on The NewMusicalTheatre.com Green Room.
To anyone, but mostly, the “me”s, I am a white, cisgender, gay man, writing musical theatre in New York City, and I am not uncommon. The amount of “me”s I see writing and performing and garnering awards and taking new jobs and making names for themselves is staggering. The inherent male/white/and yes, even in this case, gay […]
The post Being Aware appeared first on The NewMusicalTheatre.com Green Room.
