Chorus Line

“On Broadway, although some female roles are narrow, demeaning, passive, or long-suffering and convey weakness, the performer sings with incredible strength. Listening to the female singing voice is a more complicated phenomenon. Visually, the character singing is the passive object of our gaze. But aurally, she is resonant; her musical speech drowns out everything in range. A singer, more than any other musical performer, stands before us having wrested the composing voice away from the lyricist and composer who wrote the score.” Said Musicologist Carolyn Abbate (Wolf, p.31)

In the University of Alabama’s performance of A Chorus Line, the performers tackled this infamous piece for its dramatizations of what actors and performers endure in the line of work that is theatre. As explained by the actors in the documentary “Every Little Step”, being a performer in A Chorus Line is the ultimate dream because it was made by actors for actors. There were a few factors that made the University of Alabama’s performance stand out to me including the choreography, seeing the documentary Every Little Step before the show, and the live music.

social class. Furthermore, many people had suffered as an American and a Negro with the double dislocation of identity and nonidentity living their life through the burden of racial prejudice. Krasner declares that “Parody of racism and the sense of double consciousness in African American life, surface repeatedly in the lyrics of black songs” (320). Thus, we see and hear these lyrics in various musicals in the play, where it deepens the understanding of the music that helps us better understand the message, story, feelings and actions of the characters, which creates meaning to the audience. These songs were sang by the colored people in the musical because it expressed their viewpoint and race. It emphasized the complexity of the positions that black writers and performers had faced to develop their work. We understand the struggles that African American people faced through the words, voice, tone of the black music that expressed the conflict of the colored people. However, Krass states that “White audiences may have found the African American dialect amusing” (320). Altogether, due to these problems about race many black performers used the artful and aesthetic use of parody and double consciousness in song lyrics to express the struggle against the dehumanizing effects of racism that many African American faced. The songs were a way that many people colored people were able to raise awareness and address their issues and concerns that greatly affected them in the

The musicals Billy Elliot and Grease present both conventional and unconventional representations of gender throughout. Both musicals also seem to obscure the message of the underlying gender stereotyping issues by overshadowing them with elements such as music, dance and costume.

has been recognized as a new kind of musical play that denied its Broadway audiences many of their most treasured traditions, says David Ewen in American Musical Theatre. There was no opening chorus line, no chorus until midway through the first act, in fact. There was rather a serious ballet and other serious overtones, including a killing in act two. The story, which was so simple, seemed to engage the audience in more than mere evening diversion. (248) These changes, far from disappointing to viewers, were upheld by a success that had never been seen in the history of musical theatre.

At the end of World War I, an excited America was poised for a cultural renaissance; patriotism was on the rise, the strong concept of Manifest Destiny had passed its peak of influence, and, most importantly, there had not been a clear shift in culture for decades. The Jazz Age of the 1920s was about to dawn, bringing with it youthful, risqué morals and a carefree look on life. From these ideals, a new, strongly American form of entertainment would emerge: musical theatre. Most commonly found in New York City on Broadway even to this day, musical theatre became an escape from reality and an entry into the imagination. The grand and splashy components that make up what is considered a classic Broadway musical can ultimately be traced back to Cole Porter. Porter’s writing, albeit at times controversial or raunchy, was able to harness the frantically beating heart of the Jazz Age and turn it into treasured shows. Using his unique melodies, romantic or idealistic lyrics, and his pioneering of writing about the human experience, Cole Porter shaped American music and theatre from the 1920s through the 1940s.

In A Chorus Line, there is one particular scene and song that alludes to themes that are relevant to the year of 1945. The first scene of the musical involves many dancers called up by their numbers and performing dance combinations. Then the scene transitions to the song “I Hope I Get it.” The scene depicts many themes, such as not being able to distinct one person from the other. There is no theme that deals with everyone being unique and themselves. This theme is shown when Judy forgets her number as Zach is calling up people. Zach does not identify any of the dancers as an individual but a number that can be easily replaced. Moreover, “I Hope I Get it” reveals the desperation dancers have for attaining a job. In the year of 1945, many

Even after the Harlem Renaissance was off the forefront of the nation’s mind, Langston Hughes continued to comment on the demoralization that white people have historically done unto the African-American community. In his 1940 poem, “Note on Commercial Theater”, Hughes looked to the writers for Broadway and the presentations of commercial theater and saw the appropriation of black culture and perversion of music introduced by the Harlemites. These writers made the music whiter while stripping the credit from those who established it. Despite not having the recognition of white people at that time, Hughes still knew that “someday somebody’ll / Stand up and talk about me, / And write about me—” even if it would only be himself (Note on Commercial Theatre 12-14). Somehow, somewhere, someone would always be able to identify the wrongs white people inflict on others and be able to pay homage to the struggle while still celebrating their culture. His awareness of the ability of the black community to join together and acknowledge progression demonstrates his confidence in that community as a whole. It does not matter whether or not his own words are heard in his time, but instead that someone else will take them to heart and further the progression towards a better situation. The promise of a future ties the entire black community together towards more opportunities for growth.

Bert Williams was born on November 12, 1874, in Nassau, Bahamas. After his family faced some economic issues, they moved from California to the Bahamas in 1884 to for better economic opportunities. Living in California is where his fascination with performances began, mainly medicine shows and seeing the magicians, singers, dancers, etc. Williams worked in the genre of the blackface minstrel show, which was one of the key components of a longstanding attempt by white Americans to degrade Americans of African descent. This project involves discovering the significance Bert Williams had on performances during his era. The goal of this paper is to show how incredible of a performer Bert Williams was and how his performances left such a lasting impact to this day. I argue that Bert Williams utilized performance techniques that were identifiable to typical Broadway audiences of the late 1800s to create opportunities for African-American performers to succeed in show business in the United States. He did this by being a black body using dominantly white performance techniques to subversively make white audiences become used to seeing black bodies doing the same things white bodies do on stage. Williams changed the focused the plots of his performances to situations in which any member of the audience could relate to, no matter their race. Additionally, he proved that minstrelsy shows could feature songs about black characters without containing violent and horrific stereotypes. He used his heritage and platform to be a trailblazer in opening opportunities for African-Americans to succeed in show business in the United States.

This play fits into high comedy because it is constrained by social expectations, and has important social commentary on racial divides and racism today versus in the past.

1920’s Broadway was booming! Due to the changes in song formatting, the modernization of plot line, and with a variety of dance style, The Jazz Age catapulted Broadway to a higher dimension than ever before. Like most hits, the Jazz Age fizzled out due to unforeseen circumstances. The Jazz Age ended with the 1929 stock market crash and the onset of the Great Depression. The country suffered, investments dropped, banks failed, and crashing companies caused massive unemployment rates. Along with the rest of the country, Broadway was negatively impacted by The Great Depression. However, despite the loss of jobs and struggling venues, the decade of the thirties proved to be an enlightening and rich experience for Broadway. Through research, we will open the curtain with the negative effects that The Great Depression had on Broadway during the 1930’s, then venture into the rising action where we will be begin to see the turning point, and finally end the show in the final act with the light at the end of the tunnel.

With all the news about violence in the city of Chicago, it’s a refreshing change for locals to watch musicals, especially if the story will take you to back to the city of Chicago in the 1920’s. During this time, there was a huge influx of killings sprees among the residents which is really not as inspiring as it should be. However, as a musical show, the storyline was presented through a fresh and entertaining approach.

noticed and regarded in a musical. Therefore, we see how the race was not significant when judging the overall performance of the play, but the way the performers act in the musicals is what conveys meaning, where they are able to blend in with their new identity and appearance performing on stage.

Lin-Manuel Miranda made this play to show the colorful people of Washington Heights. This play does a good job with diversity because it includes people from many cultures. You can find latinos, blacks, whites, and many more their. Washington Heights is a diverse community with troubles such as rising rent and closing businesses. It shows how the people come together and support each other as a community. The residents are very hard working and they rejoice with music and dancing.

Post antebellum and Pre-civil rights United States was an entirely different world than what we are currently living in today. But the striking resemblance from the past in regards to injustice, intolerance, and racism is a haunting reminder of the progress that still needs to happen in our society presently. In Ball State’s production of the musical Parade, the show takes the audience on a journey back to a familiar world, a world which we have studied in history class and a world we have learned from our ancestors that passed the knowledge onto us. “Parade is an unfortunately true story about humanity and how we react when our perception of the world is shattered, and about those who cut themselves trying to put the pieces back together.”