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- Volume 1, Issue 2, 2007
Studies in Musical Theatre - Volume 1, Issue 2, 2007
Volume 1, Issue 2, 2007
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Singing actors and dancing singers: Oscillations of genre, physical and vocal codes in two contemporary adaptations of Purcell's Dido and Aeneas
More LessThis article looks at two recent and widely recognized productions of Henry Purcell's Dido and Aeneas (by choreographer Sasha Waltz, Berlin 2005, and theatre director Sebastian Nbling, Basel 2006) and discusses three main aspects: 1. Genre: coming from a Tanztheater (Waltz) and a Sprechtheater (Nbling) background, each director renegotiates conventions of the operatic genre and consciously evades expectations in pursuit of a new and challenging experience for both the performers and their audience. 2. Physicality: both productions place the performers' bodies at the forefront of the mise-en-scne they remap the singing, dancing, acting body by questioning conventions and expectations commonly found in the production and reception process. 3. Adaptation: both productions take unconventional liberties by adapting in a domain where notions of Werktreue (fidelity to the original work or score) still reign. Adopting ideas from Nicholas Cook and Mikhail Bakhtin, I will argue that the conceptual, musical and theatrical implications of both productions indicate a renegotiation of the social and performative relevance of operatic performance.
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From melodrama to blockbuster: a comparative analysis of musical camouflage in Victorian theatre and twenty-first-century film
By Rob DeanThis article explores the use of music as a functional device which disguises the artificial construction of narrative media. The identification of the principles behind the specific positioning of musical material in the presentation of film and theatre reveals that in certain scenarios the aural accompaniment is not simply utilized as an emotive tool. Instead the polemic pursued in this article reveals that music also fulfils the practical purpose of camouflaging narrative leaps in time, space and dimension. Furthermore the comparative analysis of nineteenthcentury dramatic texts penned by Dion Boucicault and twenty-first-century films written and directed by M. Night Shyamalan establishes both an interdisciplinary connection between the two media forms and highlights the parallel musical practices employed in the past and the present.
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Takarazuka is burning: music theatre and the performance of sexual and gender identities in modern Japan
More LessThe Takarazuka Revue, an all-female music theatre troupe founded in 1913 as the flagship of an elite performance academy, with its ultimate interest in Broadway musicals and western music, theatre and dance influences, is an unlikely foil for its male antecedent, kabuki. Like the ongoing revival of kabuki, there had been an ideological as well as entrepreneurial impetus behind the Revue's creation, which reflected changes in the nature of popular entertainment in Japan. Kobayashi Ichiz, the founder of the Takarazuka Revue, claimed that Japan needed a new form of national theatre that was based in popular culture or kokumingeki, an entertainment for the masses in the style of kabuki in that it was to feature dance and music. What Kobayashi could not foresee was that the Takarazuka Revue would grow into quite the opposite a cult-status entertainment for its enduring fandom of housewives and fanatical teenage girls.
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The corporeality of musical expression: the grain of the voice and the actor-musician
More LessThis article considers the essential engagement of a physical corporeality in making music, a presence that is rewardingly encountered in music theatre, where it is not merely implied but visually, kinaesthetically and corporeally witnessed. Through a detailed discussion of Barthes's The Grain of the Voice and its Kristevan source material, the author understands this physical presence to sit at the very heart of the genotextual potential of performance. The article observes the work of UK music theatre group SharpWire and other actor-musician ensembles, such as those involved in John Doyle's recent productions, and suggests that in the performance of music theatre, the actor-musician re-enacts the emergence into the Symbolic order that is the very essence of human expression.
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Just another Puerto Rican with a knife? Racism and reception on the Great White Way
More LessIn the January/February 1998 issue of Hispanic magazine, Robert Dominguez called the upcoming musical The Capeman a historic event, predicting that it would precipitate more Latino-themed Broadway productions (Dominguez 1998: 84). His prediction has proven inaccurate. Musicals such as In the Heights notwithstanding, this group has continued to be under-represented or misrepresented on and behind the Broadway stage. This essay explores the roles (or lack of) Latinos have played on and off the Broadway stage and contextualizes their presence/absence within larger issues of reception and race in musical theatre, leading to new hypotheses regarding the failure of The Capeman and pointing towards new directions for the future of Latino/a musical theatre.
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Imagining His Dark Materials as a Gesamtkunstwerk
More LessUsing first-hand interviews conducted with playwright Nicholas Wright and composer Jonathan Dove, this article discusses the adaptation and production process behind the Royal National Theatre's staging of His Dark Materials. It suggests that an interdisciplinary, collaborative approach was essential in bringing Pullman's epic to the stage. Different combinations of dialogue, music, scenic design, staging and puppetry allowed the production to convey detailed character histories and complex emotional experiences, and cover vast geographies, distilling the essence of the compelling epic. In leaving the structure of the interdisciplinary collaboration transparent, this article argues that the director, Nicholas Hytner, and his team invited the audience to enter the worlds of the play as participants in the collaborative work, free to mould their own experience of the heroes' adventures, and complete the adaptation with their own imagination. This twenty-first-century Gesamtkunstwerk bears comparison with Wagner's Ring cycle of music dramas.
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Reviews
Authors: Reviews Poston-Anderson, Magnus Schneider and Ben WilesDance and Dancers in the Victorian and Edwardian Music Hall Ballet, Music in Nineteenth-Century Britain series, Alexandra Carter, (2005) Aldershot: Ashgate, 177 pp., ISBN 0 7546 3736 0 (hbk), 50.00
Operatic Migrations: Transforming Works and Crossing Boundaries, Roberta Montemorra Marvin and Downing A. Thomas (eds.), (2006) Aldershot (UK) and Burlington (US): Ashgate, 274 pp., ISBN 0 7546 5098 7 (hbk), 65.00
The Musical as Drama: A Study of the Principles and Conventions Behind Musical Shows from Kern to Sondheim, Scott McMillin, (2006) Princeton: Princeton University Press, 230 pp., ISBN 0691127301 (hbk), 15.95
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