When it first started, musical theatre wasn’t what we think of today, it wasn’t even called musical theatre. The roots of this art form go all the way back to ancient Greece. In America, however, it goes all the way back to minstrel shows, then vaudeville, follies after that, musical comedy and then finally it developed into what we recognize as musical theatre. This paper will tell a brief history of how musical theatre, or more specifically, Broadway, developed. There’s one prominent person who helped to establish the basis of Broadway theatre, Florenz Ziegfeld. In 1893 Ziegfeld went to Broadway to secure an act for the Chicago World Fair. At the time, broadway theaters were showing blackface minstrel shows, knockout comedy skits,
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When the theatre producing the show went bankrupt, the managers figured they had nothing to lose and gave the show writers complete creative control. They took many artistic risks, including an opening number with a cowboy singing a solo unlike every other ensemble opening (which is still very common today). They also wrote songs in a more conversational style, each orchestrated to fit specific characters and situations. Oklahoma was the first production to break out of the typical musical comedy or opera mold. Rodgers and Hammerstein, the two who wrote Oklahoma, told a story and explored relationships the way a play does, which had never been done in commercial musical theatre before, but it’s something that people have done ever since making Oklahoma a true milestone in the history of American musical theatre.
“After the Rodgers and Hammerstein revolution, songs became part of the story, as opposed to just entertainments in between comedy scenes.”
-Stephen Sondheim
“Before Oklahoma, Broadway composers and lyricists were songwriters – after Oklahoma, they had to be dramatists, using everything in the score to develop character and advance the action. As Mark Steyn explains in Broadway Babies Say Goodnight (Routledge, NY, 1999, p.67), with earlier songs by Lorenz Hart or Cole Porter, you hear the lyricist – with Hammerstein, you hear the characters”
When the theatre producing the show went bankrupt, the managers figured they had nothing to lose and gave the show writers complete creative control. They took many artistic risks, including an opening number with a cowboy singing a solo unlike every other ensemble opening (which is still very common today). They also wrote songs in a more conversational style, each orchestrated to fit specific characters and situations. Oklahoma was the first production to break out of the typical musical comedy or opera mold. Rodgers and Hammerstein, the two who wrote Oklahoma, told a story and explored relationships the way a play does, which had never been done in commercial musical theatre before, but it’s something that people have done ever since making Oklahoma a true milestone in the history of American musical theatre.
“After the Rodgers and Hammerstein revolution, songs became part of the story, as opposed to just entertainments in between comedy scenes.”
-Stephen Sondheim
“Before Oklahoma, Broadway composers and lyricists were songwriters – after Oklahoma, they had to be dramatists, using everything in the score to develop character and advance the action. As Mark Steyn explains in Broadway Babies Say Goodnight (Routledge, NY, 1999, p.67), with earlier songs by Lorenz Hart or Cole Porter, you hear the lyricist – with Hammerstein, you hear the characters”