In Poland, unlike in the West (especially the United States), musical theatre has always stood on the sidelines - treated as entertainment at rather low level, ignored not only by the political world but also by the theatre makers. Most of the Polish theatres, until 1989, led a policy of filling the room to the highest capacity at the lowest cost. Not to mention that the aim of most of the productions was not to shape the tastes but to flatter people who watched the musical productions presented in that period of time. It was a consequence of the wrong management system in the theatre, where the artistic value of the work wasn’t valuable at all. The only important thing was to get positive opinion from the political committee, which decided whether one will remain on the director's chair. Nowadays, the situation has slightly changed but the only difference is that the role of political influences was replaced by the inexorable power of industry mechanisms. Finances, or rather lack of them, are the new reasons of the problems which are solved by lowering the standards and adapting to what the audience want to watch rather than what the artists, directors have to show.
Musical theatre in Poland is strongly connected with the history of operetta as most of today's musical theatre scenes started in the fifties from this particular genre. There is one place especially worth mentioning with its huge cultural impact on the whole musical theatre scene in Poland - formed in 1958 Musical Theatre in Gdynia, which was founded by Danuta Baduszkowa. She developed an extremely well-thought vision of the theatre and since the beginning she prioritised the musical theatre as a form of higher art. The operetta began to fade thanks to the actions l...
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...from their current level, the ones that count in terms of artistic taste are devoid of a strong financial support. This determines their defeat at the beginning of the fight for not only about the expansion of the audience but for the level of artistic craftsmanship or the best team of performers.
The current actions of the musical theatre in Poland lead to the conclusion that, despite the growing interest in this entertaining version of the theatre, problem of the quality of the theatre will continue to exist. 'You cannot talk about crossing artistic boundaries, shocking with novel visions, when we cannot cope with the tradition and the basic canon of that art' (A. Schimscheiner, 22/04/2014). As long as those will be the biggest problems, musical theatre in Poland will still be entertainment and only entertainment, overlooked in serious discourse about the theatre.
If there is truly tradition to be found among the great theatres both on and off Broadway, then certainly the Sullivan Street Playhouse and its long running production of The Fantasticks rates as one of the most celebrated of New York theatrical traditions. Maintaining its place as the longest running production Off Broadway, The Fantasticks remains an enchanting and insightful tale of both young love and bitter disillusionment. It also reminds one, in this age of spectacle and the mega-musical, how powerful and truly inspiring theatre itself can be. Clearly, one of the great strengths of this production and a large part of its appeal for audiences over the last four decades lies in the fact that both the story and the style of presentation compliment each other so completely. Here we find the non-essentials are stripped away, and we are left to rely simply on the imagination of both the audience and the performers to create a magical evening.
Kislan, Richard. The Musical: A Look at the American Musical Theater. New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1980. 84, 110, 116-121, 125-127, 128, 134, 163, 195, 201, 209. Print.
Ever heard of a story that sings of the “Angel of Music” and the “Phantom of the Opera”? A tale that once you have listened to the sweet melody that you will realized that you've pasted the “Point of No Return”? This love triangle has captivated multitudes ever since the 1910 original Phantom of the Opera was published in France by Monsieur Leroux, although most story lovers recall the musical of the same name by Andrew Lloyd Webber or the motion picture adaption. Although this story has been entertaining people for over a century, in this new era have prerecorded voices and movements begun to overshadow the talented performers of live theater? Although “The lavish screen adaptation of Andrew Lloyd Webber's Phantom of the Opera (2005) only deepened the damage” of the dislike of musicals made into film “with non-stars in the leads and an unimaginative production,”(Musical),which version, the live performance or the film, makes the story more attractive? To answer these questions, permit this essay to analyze two methods of storytelling: 2011 live performance Andrew Lloyd Webber's The Phantom of the Opera at the Royal Albert Hall and the 2005 film, and decide if music and story lovers everywhere have too “turned from true beauty”.
Marc Blitzstein’s The Cradle Will Rock, published in 1938, has garnered attention from the very beginnings of its existence. It quickly seduced the initial director and producers with its varied musical styles ranging from classical arias to satirical ensemble numbers. However, this proletarian opera has reached moderate infamy not necessarily because of the quality of its content, but because of the way it reached its premiere performance. What began as a government-sponsored production became a guerrilla effort to perform in spite of government censors. This controversial piece resonated with both performers and audiences, and most of the cast’s sheer determination to present Blitzstein’s work is a source of great fascination. Due largely to the perfect storm created by the lingering tensions of the First Red Scare and the Great Depression, The Cradle Will Rock and the events surrounding its debut contributed directly to the end of the Federal Theatre Project.
Kenrick, John. Musical Theatre A History. New York: The Continuum International Publishing Group, 2008. Print.
As in all genres, the musicals have had its share of failures. Some worthy dramas have been pressed into service and musicalized and sometimes butchered in the process, and audiences have had to watch a fine play diluted into a mediocre musical. But the successes have been many and spectacular and they have left a long lasting effect on the American art and culture.
The name of the Bread and Puppet Theatre hails from the custom of sharing freshly baked bread with the theatre visitors to symbolise that art should be an everyday ritual for everyone just like eating bread.` We give you a piece of bread with the puppet show because our bread and theatre belong together. For a long time the theatre arts have been separated from the stomach. Theatre was entertainment.` (Peter Schumann, Bread & Puppet official website). The foremost goal of this theatre is to raise feelings of sensitivity in the viewer and to outline what the terms 'good' and 'evil' mean, especially in political spheres. This reflects the use of the audience as being used to create this form of emotion within the performanceset up, this is done through the raising the elements of sensitivity within their audience. Theatre also places a huge emphasis on the education and popularisation of art. Artists expressing their pacifistic views, strongly opposed to the war in Vietnam, and the enormous dolls created by Schumann have since become a permanent feature in many pacifistic demonstrations. Theatre critiques racial discrimination, deaf royal of natural habitats, compulsory military service and globalism. The theatre spectacles take the role of mentors who teach is lessons of morality - they are full of symbolism, archetypes and they refer to the bible, mythology and folklore.` ìWe believe in puppet theatre as a wholesome and powerful language that can touch men and women and children alike, and we hope that our plays are true and are saying what has to be said, and that they add to your enjoyment and enlightenment ` (Robert Schumann, Bread & Puppet Theatre official website). They focus on en...
American musicals just weren’t proving successful- as they were focusing on the previous century’s trend of “substance over spectacle”. However, ‘Brit Hits’ became overwhelmingly successful by breaking away from the previous ideal and creating a theme of ‘bigger and better!’, focusing primarily on creating sights over substance. With casts and creative teams of the shows being larger than ever, as well as the aid of technology advancements- it proved to be the way to go! Larger sets and bigger special effects were introduced, including helicopters flying onto stage and chandeliers crashing on stage. Due to higher budgets and musical theatre reaching its peak, shows like Cats changed the way theatre published and promoted. In the past, shows had only souvenir programs or shirts, but Cats’ signature pair of yellow eyes, plastered the show’s logo, across coffee cups, jackets, ornaments, key chains, pins etc.- anything that could be thought of, changing the course of advertising. These “Brit Hits” showed a promising future for musical theatre, bringing in tens of thousands of new fans and showcasing a real ‘WOW’ factor through the ideal of big budgets, big effects, big orchestration, big casts and overall, big
There are many great musicals that the world has ever seen in the past years. Some have often brought us to tears while some may have brought to us to a world far beyond our imagination’s reach. In a world where television and the internet have often given us too many options to choose from as a form of entertainment, the soul and level of perfection still brought about by the broad way musicals are still one of the best for some of us.
Many cultural enthusiasts, archaeologists, and architects have a common interest in theatre and its origins. People from a few decades back have located the remaining of the oldest theatres in Greece, England, France and some parts of minor Asia. Theatre was a part of people’s lives as it was one of the few sources of entertainment, and it was originated from when people collectively sit in a gathering and listen to a storyteller. There were performances done by different people present at that moment. Later on, this activity kept improving and innovating, and in the result, many theaters for entertaining purposes were built by emperors who ruled the countries or kingdom in those days. The design of these theatres
In this paper, I will be focusing briefly on my knowledge and understanding of the concept of Applied theatre and one of its theatre form, which is Theatre in Education. The term Applied Theatre is a broad range of dramatic activity carried out by a crowd of diverse bodies and groups.
Theatre-In-Education The theatre education industry/movement has seen some rapid changes since its initial developments and establishment in the 1960’s. However its origins mainly lie in the early years of the last century. It was the initial establishment of companies such as Bertha Waddell’s in Scotland and Esme Church’s in the north of England that thoroughly established the main roots of TIE.
In popular entertainment, if not in literature, yesterday's avant garde is often tomorrow's mainstream, so the term can function as a label simply identifying the next trend. As the American poet John Ashbery pointed out in an influential 1968 essay on the nature of the avant garde, where once an innovative artist had to wait a whole career to see their work absorbed into m...
Theatre will always survive in our changing society. It provides us with a mirror of the society within which we live, and where conflicts we experience are acted out on stage before us. It provides us with characters with which we identify with. The audience observes the emotions and actions as they happen and share the experience with the characters in real time.
Theatre is something that brings people together; it needs and audience to exist unlike movies and television. For a performance to happen, anywhere from a hundred to a thousand or more people need to gather in one place for a few hours, and share together in witnessing a live event that may be beautiful, funny, moving, or thought-provoking. Each type can fade in and out of popularity but it is not foreseeable that live performance will ever really "die out". Even in a world where all narrative performances have migrated to video, some musician at some point may introduce a new element of theatricality into their show, or some standup comic will act out something for their routine, people will respond to it, and suddenly we 'll see Shakespeare, Tennessee Williams, and Rogers and Hammerstein popping up all over the