Have you ever been in a position where two people are talking about a shared interest and they start referring to jargon that you just can’t wrap your head around? Well, with this article, you’ll become a bit more knowledgeable about one of the finest arts out there: musical theater. A musical is a form of storytelling that combines spoken dialogue with sung lyrics. Like any art form, there is the message that the musical wants to convey to the audience, the story that will convey that message and the “tools” that will be used to tell that story. Learning what those tools are and how the creators of musicals use them is the first step to understanding the genre.
In a musical, the story usually follows a two-act, or two-part, structure. The first act is typically used to establish all the pieces of the story, like characters, settings, tone and genre of music. This usually includes an opening number, which is the super in-your-face song that tells you essentially everything you need to know about what you’re going to watch. For example, the musical “Hamilton” literally begins with a song about the backstory of the main character Alexander Hamilton, giving you all the necessary context right away. You’re going to see this happen often; every time something important happens in a musical, it’s portrayed through song. In fact, you wouldn’t be too far off to call a musical “a concert with acting” as opposed to acting with musical elements.
The first act usually has a few other key parts to them. First is the “I want” song, where the main character tells the audience what they’re going to spend the rest of the time pursuing. “My Shot” in “Hamilton” is where Hamilton explains how he wants to take this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to completely change his life and leave a mark on the world. There is also the “rising action” portion that can be a mix of song and dialogue, all in the efforts of furthering the story. It’s at this point where we probably get an “ensemble number” in which all the background characters or extras coalesce and have their own song. Act 1 usually ends with a highly dramatic cliffhanger song that’s supposed to be somewhat resolving to signal the upcoming intermission, but also mysterious enough to make sure audiences don’t leave before Act 2. It’s actually quite easy to find a good middle ground. Even “Shrek the Musical” ends the first act with a resolution of a character arc through the song “Who I’d Be,” but the overarching conflict of the story still remains, keeping the audience excited for the resolution in the second part of the story.
Act 2 has to start off with the resolution of Act 1 being slightly undone in order to create a little more room for all the hero’s efforts to pay off by the time the musical ends. In terms of the music, this is achieved through a technique called a reprise. It’s an important song from Act 1 (usually the “I want” song) remastered to take on a different meaning now that more of the story has passed. Singing about a happy family sounds very different after the family is revealed to be holding some sort of dark secret.
There’s also the leitmotif, which is a recurring musical idea associated with a character, idea or emotion. The point is that when you hear a specific tune, your brain is primed with previous associations of the tune and easily adds new information to that association. There’s also the “11 o’clock number,” which is the major late-show song designed to be an emotional climax. But this is not to be confused with the finale, which is the last song played before or during the section where everyone bows. The last vocab word I’ll leave you with is used to explain the way all of those pieces are put together: dramaturgy.
Now that you have the vocabulary and basic understanding of what you’re looking at, it’s time to take those skills and apply them to some household names inside and out of Broadway.
- “Wicked”: I believe it is the most representative of modern-day Broadway. Comparison to the movie version, especially through a new set of eyes, is very welcome to most musical theater discussions.
- “The Lion King: I’d say it works toward the strengths of a new consumer, and it’s another dive into the adaptation side of musical theater, keeping you within the Broadway bubble while allowing you to experience how production and creativity can transform one medium into something far removed from the original material. Yet, despite this distance, the result can still be beautiful in its execution.
- “Les Misérables” This is what a giant dramatic musical looks like. It might seem like a jarring step up from “Wicked” and “The Lion King”, but it’s a way to see just how far the pendulum swings from one side to the other.
But beyond the readings, viewing and simply learning how to interact with the space, the ultimate teacher is experience. If you want to take this knowledge to the next stage (pun intended), joining a set build, auditioning for a role or interacting with the theater space in any way gives you the opportunity to discover and express the unique contribution you can make to the space of live musical theater.