Song Character Analysis Worksheet - The University of North ...

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dramatic ideals.” 2 Unfortunately, the standard of Show Boat’s precedence was also its shortcoming because it could not be duplicated easily, particularly in the immediate economic decline of the 1930s. The carefree, “anything goes” youth culture of the 1920s was replaced with the serious reality of the “Great Depression.” There was little financial capital for staged extravaganzas and experimentation in New York City. Those who could afford theatre tickets wanted escapist entertainment at musical comedies or the movies. Two musicals of the 1930s that came close to the serious messages of Show Boat were George Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess (1935) and Marc Blitzstein’s The Cradle Will Rock (1938), but they are both exceptions. 3 The fully integrated musical drama would not appear again for fifteen years, not until the serendipitous pairing of Hammerstein with Richard Rodgers for Oklahoma! (1942). Regarding the subversive aspects of Show Boat, I have not found any evidence that Kern and Hammerstein deliberately attempted to further the women’s movement and feminine liberation through their libretto and score. But, I do believe, based on the examples and musical clues discussed in this document, that they did subtly subvert the hege- monic perspective of women’s social and domestic roles through the medium of musical 2 The Broadway Musical: A Critical and Musical Survey (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990; rev. ed., 2002), 49. 3 Many critics and historians, including Swain, argue about whether Porgy and Bess should be considered as a musical or as an opera. Broadway Musical, 48. Blitzstein’s work, funded by the federal Works Progress Administration, was an overt political statement regarding labor union malpractice. It should also be noted that during the 1930s many successful Broadway composers (including Kern, Gershwin, Irving Berlin, and Cole Porter) were lured to California by a lucrative career in Hollywood. Movie musicals became the new stage for experimentation and elaborate spectacle. The shows gained national exposure for greater profit with less cost to the individual audience member. It is a curious irony that the first movie musicals were recycled from the stage versions (often with the same actors) and now that process has been reversed. The current trend on Broadway is the dramatic musical that is a movie adapation, or the “Jukebox” musical, a loosely organized “book” of a popular singer’s or group’s oeuvre. Examples include Mamma Mia (ABBA), Movin’ Out (Billy Joel) and All Shook Up (Elvis). 109
theatre performance practice. They allowed the audience to glimpse Truth through stereotypical portrayals of stock characters, and then challenged assumptions of that Truth by humanizing the stereotypes through character growth in emotional journeys and even comical scenes of life. 4 Thus, the work of Kern and Hammerstein is provocative. It challenges the listener to react during the production and to ponder thoughtfully its messages long after the final curtain, as any great musical drama should. Academic criticism of musical theatre is difficult, according to Bruce Kirle, because the “original audience that ‘read’ the show, along with their social milieu cannot be recreated to adequately interpret.” 5 It is then necessary for the serious young performer to research and re-create the “cultural moment that produced the product,” accomplished by the study of performance practice, its initial reception, and its “historical relativism.” 6 This document has explored all three of Kirle’s criteria. It has provided a framework for an original, historically informed “cultural moment” as a model for preparing character roles for a classic-style musical, with an emphasis on gender-based research. The context of early twentieth-century musical theatre has been traced from its multiple predecessors to the genre’s early culmination in the melodramatic/comedic/operetta style of Show Boat. Traditional gender roles have been discussed for socio-historical context through the late nineteenth-century societal debate of the “Woman Question,” as well as the moral values in stereotypes of the nineteenth-century Victorian or Post-Bellum Southern Belle 4 This is the same approach that Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Lorenzo da Ponte used in their dramma giocoso fusion of seria and buffa techniques for Don Giovanni and The Marriage of Figaro. 5 “Cultural Collaborations: Re-historicizing the American Musical” (Ph.D. diss., City University of New York, 2002), 2. 6 Kirle, 2. 110
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LEWIS, ANNE, D.M.A. An Examination
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APPROVAL PAGE This dissertation has
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TABLE OF CONTENTS iv Page ACKNOWLED
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for research, this paper will explo
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MacDonald, labeled musical theatre
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The musicals that have entered the
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and individually as handwriting.”
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Methodology The base of research fo
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Feminine Character in Selected Libr
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from the 1920s, they are timeless i
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e helpful to recognize the specific
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as a Cinderella-type heiress who ma
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Vereen described the “blackface c
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Casino Theatre in Manhattan. The re
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functional sets, and an eleven-piec
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The History of the Musical, Show Bo
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amount of instrumental music, the d
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Ferber’s novel begins with the na
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Act II begins four years later as G
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CHAPTER III SOCIETAL STEREOTYPES OF
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communion.” 5 This bias continued
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children, however, did allow mother
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unhealthy, sub-human environments.
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dominated by masculine traits in ap
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magazines, including Ladies Home Jo
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Nineteenth Century Stereotypes of W
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usiness. She was responsible for th
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gender) inequality forced them inst
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The 1920s was the Jazz Age, a time
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CHAPTER IV THEATRICAL STEREOTYPES O
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peoples . . . to save us from our o
Page 63 and 64: separate seating arrangements). The
Page 65 and 66: Feminine Aesthetic in Theatre Any a
Page 67 and 68: gossip columns. 17 Exploitation on
Page 69 and 70: means to economic or career advance
Page 71 and 72: Florenz Ziegfeld, reportedly, was q
Page 73 and 74: in a subservient role as a domestic
Page 75 and 76: looked, Magnolia decided, as if the
Page 77 and 78: When he holds me close, Close as we
Page 79 and 80: In the novel, Parthy Ann is a three
Page 81 and 82: opens her handbag and takes out a p
Page 83 and 84: “hero”) and the piano player (t
Page 85 and 86: the nineteenth century’s gender r
Page 87 and 88: of that time. Performance practice
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Page 91 and 92: order while the musical number repr
Page 93 and 94: “Finding in that sound all the ki
Page 95 and 96: often distorts vibrant voices, rend
Page 97 and 98: elationships with other characters
Page 99 and 100: Finally, the process includes a mus
Page 101 and 102: any other theater music heard up to
Page 103 and 104: een presented in previous chapters,
Page 105 and 106: “Though the cold and brutal fact
Page 107 and 108: [Bridge]: When he goes away dat’s
Page 109 and 110: angelically while caught in the act
Page 111 and 112: The song appears twice more as a pl
Page 113: CHAPTER VI CURTAIN CALL The musical
Page 117 and 118: BIBLIOGRAPHY General Sources Burkho
Page 119 and 120: Long, Mary Anne. “‘All Our Girl
Page 121 and 122: Kerber, Linda K., and Jane Sherron
Page 123 and 124: Levine, Lawrence W. The Opening of
Page 125 and 126: Song Title: Show Title: Lyricist: C
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