To finish off dead week, trainees in the University of Nebraska-Lincoln’s Glenn Korff School of Music and Johnny Carson School of Theatre and Movie will present a one-night-only exploration of musical theater through the years.
The display is a totally free event set for April 26 at 7:30 p.m. in Westbrook Recital Hall Room 119. It’s the last performance for THEA 398, Musical Theatre Repertoire and Designs class, and will last less than an hour.
Trainees from both schools will perform 10 scenes from musicals spanning from the early 20th century to modern day.
Alisa Belflower, the director of the display and a senior lecturer at UNL, stated the showcase begins with a tune in the style of European operetta and ends with more modern music, like an unreleased tune written by the exact same group behind the musical “Frozen.”.
Since there’s a vast history of musical comedy in America, Belflower stated the class had to select 10 considerable minutes in each age for the display. This consists of the operetta, the time period during which sheet music for individual Broadway tunes was offered, Rodgers and Hammerstein’s prime time and contemporary musical theater.
Belflower stated the showcase comes out of a term of work done by the trainees, and the tunes represent the highlights of their research study. Since January, each student has actually studied how the music and efficiency styles of musical comedy have developed from the category’s beginning to what audiences recognize today. This showcase is a presentation of their research.
” After individuals see the program, they’ll see the development of American musical theater,” Belflower stated. “However in a vibrant method, not a scholastic way.”.
According to Belflower, the display will also introduce audience members to musicals they may not have actually become aware of in the past. She stated lots of people do not know much music from the era prior to Rodgers and Hammerstein, the composers and authors behind traditional programs like “Oklahoma!,” “The King and I” and “The Noise of Music.”.
The period of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s appeal is called the Golden Age of musical theater, and the showcase aims to expose musicals and styles from the times prior to and after the Golden era. So, only one tune, “I Can’t Say No” from “Oklahoma!,” is from that period.
But the history of musical comedy is richer than that, according to Ryan Savage, a junior interdisciplinary research studies significant.
Savage stated musical theater carefully mirrors American history. In the early 20th century, it was diverse since it was inspired by the waves of immigrants arriving to America. The Golden Age, he said, marked a period when musicals ended up being more homogeneous, and reveals tended to fit within a defined style. However modern-day musicals, Savage stated, have gone back to the variety discovered in the early 1900s.
” There’s a lot of celebration of what makes a person who they are,” he stated.
In the display, Savage is carrying out a duet from “Bullets Over Broadway,” a musical based on the 1995 motion picture of the very same name. He said it’s a modern musical, but it’s performed in an older style.
Savage stated being in the class helped him develop as an entertainer, and he hopes audiences gain a much better appreciation for the history, too.
Prior to the class, Savage stated he was just really acquainted with the contemporary style of musical theater, and doing this research study has actually opened his eyes to the range of the past.
” I have more gratitude for older art types,” he stated. “To much better comprehend how to carry out, you have to comprehend where it originates from.”.
Belflower stated her main objective with the class and the performance was to help students comprehend modern-day musical comedy’s family tree.
” I just want to bring individuals behind the music to life,” she said.
