Introduction

by Jennifer Bill

The American musical is a dynamic artistic medium that beautifully blends music, narrative, and performance, resulting in a profound influence on both the world of entertainment and society at large. The musical combines elements of music, dance, and theater. Musicals tell stories through a combination of spoken dialogue, song, and choreography, creating a dynamic and engaging experience for audiences. Emerging in the early 20th century, musicals have evolved into a multifaceted genre with a rich history and cultural impact.

The musical as a genre is known for its ability to explore a wide range of themes, from love and friendship to political and social commentary. It often features memorable songs that become cultural touchstones, and the choreography adds a visual dimension that enhances the storytelling.

Throughout its history, American musicals have diversified in style, embracing various genres such as comedy, drama, romance, and even incorporating elements of fantasy and science fiction. They have also become a global phenomenon, captivating audiences around the world and inspiring adaptations, revivals, and new creations.

Broadway, located in New York City, has been the epicenter of American musical theater, producing countless iconic shows that have left a lasting mark on popular culture. Musicals like “Oklahoma!”, “West Side Story”, “The Sound of Music”, “Les Misérables”, “Hamilton”, and many others have not only entertained audiences but also tackled social issues, conveyed powerful emotions, and reflected the spirit of their respective eras.

The American Musical

What is the American musical? It is many things: a fusion of song, dance, spoken and sung dialogue, and visual elements; an essential form of entertainment in popular culture; a venue for the expression of political and social themes that have shaped the American experience; a money-making enterprise, with big-budget productions requiring an enormous outlay of funds from wealthy sponsors; and a genre that both shapes and has been shaped by American culture. For many, it is synonymous with Broadway, hence the moniker “the Broadway musical.” But the musical is not just on Broadway. It is everywhere, in every major city in America and many smaller ones. Musicals are performed by professional touring companies and amateur community theatre groups and by young people in secondary schools, and they represent an area of study at colleges and universities.

Musicals are increasingly available to larger audiences through films with performances by major stars. Marquee stars such as Harry Potter’s Daniel Radcliffe routinely perform in live award-winning Broadway musicals. Popular television shows even occasionally spoof or pay homage to the musical; memorable episodes of Scrubs, Grey’s Anatomy, Phineas and Ferb, and Always Sunny in Philadelphia have featured production numbers in which the lead characters sing and dance.

The musical is a living genre, one whose history is still developing.

Musical Comedies of the 1920s and 1930s

Musical theater in the 1920s and 1930s was all about entertainment. Dance —particularly tap dance —was a crucial element in the early musical comedies popular during these decades. The plots of musical comedies are usually considered frivolous, a result of viewing them through the lens of today’s book musicals. Musical comedies of the 1920s, like any other genre, need to be understood in their own time, place, and context. They do have narratives, but they stand apart from book musicals because their emphasis is more on comedy and dance rather than on drama and character development. The musical language of jazz and other types of American popular music greatly influenced the musical theater of this era.

Figure 21.1 | (top) Ira Gershwin and (bottom) George Gershwin.

The brothers George and Ira Gershwin (composer and lyricist, respectively) created many of this era’s most popular works. Songs from some of their musicals took on lives of their own, becoming popular in their own right, independent of the shows in which they had their premieres. At the same time, many of the era’s big stars had their debuts in Gershwin shows. The title song of Strike Up the Band (1927) was the Gershwins’ first hit of the 1930s. The catchy tune “Fascinating Rhythm” with its driving syncopations was first heard in Lady Be Good (1924), the show in which siblings Fred and Adele Astaire made their debut as dancers. The lovely ballad “Someone to Watch over Me” was first heard in Oh, Kay! (1926). Girl Crazy (1930) introduced Ethel Merman to the theater-going public. Her performance of “I Got Rhythm,” and Ginger Rogers’s “Embraceable You,” helped to popularize these songs. The show spawned the partnership of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, one of the greatest dance teams in the history of musicals. Although the show itself, like many of the musical comedies of these decades, did not enjoy lasting popularity, it took on new life much later, being revamped as Crazy for You in 1992. The Gershwins’ Of Thee I Sing (1931) was the first musical to win a Pulitzer Prize for drama and the first show to have its book—the spoken dialogue apart from the song lyrics —published separately.

Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart, the first composer-lyricist team to attain recognition as such, had a hit with On Your Toes (1936). The great choreographer George Balanchine created the dances, which were central to the plot, and Rodgers and Hart wrote the book together, in a partnership that would span twenty-four years. Between the 1920s and 1940s, Rogers and Hart wrote over 30 musical comedies for stage and Hollywood.

Blue Moon

Irving Berlin is known better today for a show that came much later in his career: Annie Get Your Gun (1946). His reputation in the 1930s was built on the strength of his songs, many of which were wildly popular, such as “There’s No Business Like Show Business,” “God Bless America,” “White Christmas,” “Alexander’s Ragtime Band,” and “Blue Skies,” to name a few. Berlin wrote both the music and lyrics for his songs, as did Cole Porter, one of the most important figures from around this time. Porter, like Berlin, was classically trained in music, and like Berlin, Porter also had a hit later in his career with Kiss Me Kate (1948). Porter’s songs have a technical complexity unmatched by those of any of his contemporaries. Porter’s lyrics are witty and suggestive and often exhibit a sophisticated use of rhyme. His musical Anything Goes (1934) was a vehicle for Ethel Merman (it highlighted her as the star); the title song is typical of Porter’s style. Again, dance is a central element in the narrative. The show’s revivals in 1987, 2011, and 2021 demonstrate its popularity with modern audiences.

Berlins No Business Like Show Business

Anything Goes 2011 Revival

The best-known musical of this era is decidedly not a comedy. Show Boat (1927), by composer Jerome Kern and librettist Oscar Hammerstein II, is an actual book musical, widely considered the very first in the genre’s history. With its serious tone and treatment of controversial issues of race, this work stands apart from the popular emphasis on light-hearted entertainment that characterized shows from around its time. Based on a 1926 novel by Edna Ferber with the same title, the show deals with issues of race and class, demonstrating the controversy surrounding interracial marriage. Another innovation concerns the integration of the songs into the plot. Show Boat’s songs are more central to the narrative than those of earlier (and later) musical comedies. This element would become a defining characteristic of the later book musical.

Can’t Help Lovin That Man

Old Man River

Unfortunately, Show Boat did not inspire a trend. The work and its innovations would not be influential in the development of the musical until the 1940s, when Oklahoma!, the next great book musical and the one to usher in the tradition of greater emphasis on dramatic content, had its premiere.

The Rise and Dominance of the Book Musical in the 1940s and 1950s

The 1940s and 1950s were dominated by the book musical. Creators and audiences increasingly favored shows that were based on some sort of literary source (such as a book, play, novel, or story), many of which were serious in tone and content. They typically featured down-to-earth, realistic characters with whom people could identify and had a recognizable storyline. The songs in works during this period were part of the dramatic fabric and essential to the narrative, a result of the close collaboration between the members of the creative teams who conceived the works. In contrast to earlier shows, the musicals of the 1940s and 1950s combined lighthearted and comic elements with those of a greater depth and weight, with characters that are more complex as individuals and in relation to each other. A sense of unity pervades the shows of these decades, with an emphasis on a smooth integration of all the elements.

The musicals of the two great teams of the 1940s and 1950s are the essence of the genre, classics that are still popular today; many are given regular productions in community theatres around the country as well as revivals on Broadway. The formula they created was expanded upon by their successors, and elements of it are evident in shows throughout the remaining decades of the twentieth century. Shows from this era are sometimes called “symphonic musicals” because they are symphonic in conception and execution, calling for the resources of a full classical orchestra. The composers of these partnerships carefully utilized particular instrumental colors in composing their musical scores, and professional orchestral musicians played in pit orchestras on Broadway.

Overture South Pacific

Richard Rodgers (composer) and Osear Hammerstein II (lyricist) began to collaborate after Rodgers’s partnership with Lorenz Hart came to an end. Oklahoma! (1943), based on the play Green Grow the Lilacs by Lynn Riggs, was their first collaboration. It was immensely popular, one of the most successful musicals ever on Broadway. It broke the record for the show with the longest run, with more than two thousand performances (a record it would hold for fifteen years), and won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. Its choreographer was Agnes de Mille, whose balletic style transformed theatrical dance and who originated the dream ballet (an extended sequence in which a character’s dream is acted out by dancers). The original cast recording helped make the show famous nationally.

Oklahoma “People Will Say We’re In Love” (start at 54 seconds)

Revival 2019

Carousel (1945) dealt with the somber theme of spousal abuse and featured an onstage death. Again, Agnes de Milles choreography was, like the songs, an essential component of the storytelling. One of the songs, “What’s the Use of Wond’rin?” is an example of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s expansion of the classic song form to include participation by the chorus.

Carousel “What’s the Use of Wond’rin?”

South Pacific (1949) and The King and I (1951) share some common features. Both are based on novels, are set in exotic locales, and deal with issues of racism and ethnic prejudice —how it is both created and overcome. South Pacific’s “You Have to Be Carefully Taught” addressed this issue explicitly. Both shows also centered on unusual love interests represented by lead characters from different cultural traditions and have many memorable songs that became associated with the music of the era (“Some Enchanted Evening” from South Pacific; “Shall We Dance?” and “Getting to Know You” from The King and I). The Sound of Music (1959) is perhaps their most famous show, known to family audiences through the well-loved film version from 1965 starring Julie Andrews.

“You’ve Got To Be Carefully Taught”

“Some Enchanted evening”

Frederick Loewe (composer) and Alan Jay Lerner (lyricist) built successfully on the Rodgers and Hammerstein model. Lerner, unlike most lyricists, had musical training. The two began collaborating in the early 1940s. Their Brigadoon (1947), set in a mystical land in the highlands of Scotland, appealed to audiences for its elements of fantasy and exoticism. Their greatest hit, My Fair Lady (1956), was based on George Bernard Shaw’s play Pygmalion. Against a backdrop of class conflict in nineteenth-century Britain, it introduced lively and lovable characters and situations. Camelot (1960) recreated the medieval world of King Arthur, Lancelot, and Guinevere, retelling the story of their love triangle.

The film versions of these shows brought them to a broad audience. These were often heavily revised versions of the originals, with nonsinging film actors whose voices were dubbed (Audrey Hepburn’s portrayal of Eliza Doolittle in My Fair Lady is a classic example). These musicals thus developed a national following that shows from the early years of the century never had. The existence of these shows as films contributed greatly to their status as classics that they enjoy today.

Varieties of Nostalgia in the 1950s

The shows of these two towering creative teams were not the only ones to receive acclaim or to introduce innovations. Musicals carried different meanings for different audiences. The themes of the stories and situations dealt with many different issues and topics that were both appealing and thought-provoking in diverse ways and to varying degrees. Several important shows by other composers evoked a nostalgic view of America. They are known as works by their composers alone, rather than as ones that represent a partnership.

Guys and Dolls (1950), by Frank Loesser, was based on characters from stories by Damon Runyon set in the New York underworld of the 1920s and 1930s (which became known as “Runyonland”).

The Music Man (1957), by Meredith Willson, another classically trained musician, is the love story of a librarian and a traveling salesman set in small-town Iowa. Audiences loved the sweet, romantic view of urban and rural surroundings depicted by these two shows.

Gypsy (1959), by Jule Styne, can be viewed as representing nostalgia of a very different type. Set during the vaudeville era, it was based on the autobiography of the stripper Gypsy Rose Lee. Dealing with a hard-edged subject matter, it was among the first shows to reveal the unpleasant side of human relationships, with several emotionally wrenching scenes and songs for Gypsy’s strong-willed mother, Mama Rose.

Leonard Bernstein

Leonard Bernstein is a towering figure in the history of American music. His contributions to the musical world as composer, conductor, and educator are unsurpassed by those of any other artist in America in the second half of the twentieth century. Bernstein composed concert works in various genres and film scores as well as musicals. On the Town (1944), his first musical, took its inspiration from a ballet he and choreographer Jerome Robbins had created called Fancy Free. It exhibits the thorough integration of book, music, and dance so important to Bernstein’s creative vision and that would become essential to the musical’s later development.

West Side Story (1957) epitomizes Bernstein’s genius as a craftsman of musical theater and has earned its place as a classic in the genre. Opening the same year as The Music Man (demonstrating contemporary audiences’ widely ranging tastes), it involved the collaboration of the era’s leading artists: Stephen Sondheim as the lyricist, Arthur Laurents as the author of the book, and Jerome Robbins as the choreographer. Themes of discrimination, racism, and love play out in a retelling of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet set in 1950s New York highlighting the relationships between members of rival gangs and their families. The show’s music is rich in melodic and harmonic invention. The ensembles are particularly challenging to coordinate, with dense textures and complex rhythms. The “Tonight” ensemble is operatic in conception, with energetic interplay between individual lines as well as choral groups. Like the best opera composers, Bernstein portrays characters and their contrasting emotions through the changing qualities of the music they sing. “America,” with its driving rhythms and shifting accents, is another high point of the show; both ensembles require performers who are skilled dancers as well as exceptional singers.

Tonight

America

Expansions of and Alternatives to the Book Musical in the 1960s-1980s

Starting in the 1960s, creators of the musical began to experiment with new ways of telling stories, exploring new narrative structures that did not rely as greatly on the book musical’s plot-oriented approach. The book musical never disappeared or went out of style, however, and is still the most prevalent genre in popular shows of today. But certain aspects of its conventions have been influenced by stylistic developments that started to occur in the second half of the twentieth century. Some of the categories we will explore here are not actually different genres, but are ones that place different amounts and kinds of emphasis on the traditional musical’s various components.

Breaking the Mold

Perhaps the most significant change to occur in the book musical’s development around this time is the continued broadening of the types of subject matter that came to be considered acceptable for presentation on the musical stage. Gypsy, with its gritty realism, might be considered the first show to have initiated this trend and achieved success. Three musicals with strong dramatic subjects by new creative teams stand out as examples: Jerry Bock and Sheldon Harnick’s Fiddler on the Roof (1964), John Kander and Fred Ebb’s Cabaret (1966), and Chicago (1975). Fiddler and Cabaret were directed by Hal Prince, whose later collaborations with Sondheim would continue transforming the genre. Both shows deal with ethnic prejudice and discrimination, exploring issues of Jewish cultural identity in different times and places. Fiddler set a new record, garnering more than three thousand performances and winning many awards. Jerome Robbins choreographed the dances, which were increasingly important to the action, figuring even more greatly into the plot than those of earlier decades.

Fiddler on the Roof “If I Were a Rich Man”

Cabaret plays with generic convention perhaps more than any of its predecessors, the role of the narrator (the emcee of the Kit Kat Klub, originated by Joel Grey) playing an important part in that process. In addition, many of the songs are commentaries on the events in the plot. Based on Christopher Isherwood’s Berlin Stories, its serious subject—the encroachment of Nazism in Germany—was given a darkly ironic treatment.

Cabaret

Kander and Ebb had another hit with Chicago. Against the backdrop of prohibition and Al Capone’s crime world, Chicago integrated vaudeville-influenced songs and images with the edgy choreography of Bob Fosse. The ongoing 1996 revival of Chicago is the longest-running show currently on Broadway.

Chicago

The most important alternative to the book musical to emerge in the 1970s was the concept musical. Shows in this genre are more nonlinear meditations on various themes —explorations of concepts —than unified stories. A Chorus Line (1975) is perhaps the first concept musical to gain critical acclaim, winning nine Tony awards. It is also called a “fully integrated” musical, a reference to the prominence of dance in the action. Bob Fosse created the dances, continuing his rise to prominence as the leading choreographer/director of the decade. The experiences of dancers auditioning for a place in a chorus line, and their individual stories, form the dramatic material. Two songs from the show, in particular, became well-known: “One” and “What I Did for Love.”

Stephen Sondheim

Stephen Sondheim was arguably one of the most significant composers in the history of American musical theater. His eclectic works exhibit a dazzlingly broad range of styles and types of dramatic and musical expression. His shows dominated Broadway during the 1970s and much of the 1980s, garnering numerous awards including six Tonys for Best Broadway Musical. Sondheim was classically trained in music, having studied with the modernist composer Milton Babbitt, but his true mentor was Oscar Hammerstein II. After he collaborated in West Side Story and Gypsy, Sondheim’s first show for which he composed all the music was A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (1962), a hilarious throwback to the tradition of musical comedy.

A recurring theme in his subsequent shows is the many different ways people communicate with each other —or do not—in relationships. He creates complex characters who feel deeply. His shows not only explore his characters’ inner lives but address basic, larger questions about what motivates people to do the things they do. The complex psychological portraits he creates emerge as a central feature of his dramatic language. Sondheim’s shows often defy categorization because of his innovative approaches to form and structure and his tireless search for new ways to manipulate generic conventions.

Company (1970) was the first of Sondheim’s collaborations with director Hal Prince, a partnership that would last about a decade and result in the shows Follies, A Little Night Music, Pacific Overtures, and Sweeney Todd. Company is a concept musical exploring the theme of communication; its action centers on the lead character, a single man named Bobby, and his relationships to his married friends and girlfriends. Sondheim both links him with and sets him apart from the other characters through the use of a particular musical motive —a short two-pitch unit that is repeated and transformed throughout the course of the show. The motive is manipulated in specific ways to reflect Bobby’s relationships with the characters, and theirs with each other.

Follies (1971) recreates the lavish world of the Ziegfeld Follies, within which characters reexamine their life choices and the consequences of those choices. One of several of Sondheim’s shows to play with time and its passing in intriguing ways, Follies uses flashbacks to the characters’ youth as a central feature of the narrative.

A Little Night Music (1973) is sometimes referred to as an operetta for the central role played by the waltz as its predominant musical style. Its most famous song, “Send In the Clowns,” is a hauntingly poignant ballad that captures the bittersweet essence of missed opportunities and lost love.

Sweeney Todd (1979) has been described as a musical thriller. Its subject matter —a deranged barber who kills his customers and sends them to his neighbor, who then turns them into meat pies to be eaten by the unsuspecting public —is at once disturbing and irresistible. The story’s passion, tragedy, fascinating characters, and suspenseful situations have made it a modern classic that is both hair-raising and heartbreaking. Inspired by melodrama and British lore of the nineteenth century, it is an adaptation of the story The Demon Barber of Fleet Street. In contrast to conventional musicals, Sweeney Todd is almost entirely sung throughout (like many operas) with very little spoken dialogue and extensive underscoring. The original east included Angela Lansbury and Len Cariou, who both won Tony awards for their lead roles.

Sondheim’s prominence lasted into the 1980s and 1990s, during which he continued to experiment with form and nonlinear ways of storytelling. In Merrily We Roll Along (1981) everything runs backward, but audiences found this reverse narrative structure hard to follow (and consequently the show was later revised). Sunday in the Park with George (1984), winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Drama (one of the few musicals to do so), ushered in the era of partnership with James Lapine, the writer-director who wrote the book. Sondheim and Lapine also created Into the Woods and Passion and revised Merrily We Roll Along. Based on the famous painting of A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande fatte by the pointillist painter Georges Seurat, Sunday in the Park explores the nature of the creative process, playing with time and dramatic structure in new ways.

Into the Woods (1987) exhibits still more innovation. The show is about community responsibility, as characters in different fairy tales gradually begin to interact with and learn from each other in how to live life. Sondheim’s score stands out for its intricate refinement and evolution of subtle musical motifs, notably exemplified by the recurring theme of “I wish,” expressed through a rising major second interval, which serves as a fundamental building block recurring and evolving throughout the production—paralleling Lapine’s exploration of the ramifications of personal desires and aspirations. The dialogue resonates with a prominent use of syncopated speech, often delivering characters’ lines in a steady rhythm mirroring natural speech patterns, while also intentionally incorporating eighth, sixteenth, and quarter note rhythms, weaving them into a spoken song. As is characteristic of many Sondheim/Lapine collaborations, the songs capture inner reflections, enabling characters to engage in conversational introspection and express their thoughts aloud.

Assassins (1991) is a concept musical and uses an eclectic mix of musical styles drawn from diverse sources and influences. Presidential assassins (both actual and would-be) from different periods of history tell their stories and reveal their motivations and goals, reflecting on their shared experiences as alienated outsiders.

Passion (1994) represents in some ways a return to more traditional storytelling and musical language. The show is based on the Italian film Passione d’amore, and its musical style is overtly romantic, with lush harmonies and soaring melodies. It is perhaps the most sensuous of Sondheim’s musicals.

New Developments from the 1980s and Beyond: Diversity Continues

The development of musical theatre from the 1980s to the present has seen a proliferation of new genres as well as an ever-increasing overlap among the characteristics that define them. Questions as to what constitutes the major new trends and how musical theater will develop in the future continue to occupy creators, critics, and audiences. Important genres taking shape are based on factors such as dimensions and scope, musical style, reuse of earlier music, and relation to film. And many shows belong to more than one genre.

New Genres and Approaches

Megamusicals are characterized by their grand scale, lavish production values, and global popularity. Emerging in the 1980s, it redefined the musical theater landscape by incorporating elaborate sets, intricate choreography, visual effects, and memorable musical numbers. These shows often feature epic narratives, spanning diverse genres and themes, and are designed to appeal to a broad international audience. Iconic examples include Cats (1981), Les Misérables (1985), The Phantom of the Opera (1986), Miss Saigon (1989), The Lion King (1997), Wicked (2003), and Hamilton (2015). Phantom of the Opera and Cats, both by British composer Andrew Lloyd Webber, are among Broadway’s longest-running shows, and songs from them have become known internationally.

Phantom

Memory from Cats

Lion King

Many successful shows are based on popular musical styles for which their genres are named. The rock musical is one of the most difficult genres to define, primarily because rock-influeneed music has been part of the musical since at least the 1950s. It is a category that is still in flux, with the boundaries of its definition still being formulated by specialists. Hair (1967), Jesus Christ Superstar (1970), Godspell (1971), Grease (1972), Pippin (1972), The Wiz (1975), Rent (1996), and Aida (1998), are generally considered to be rock musicals. Subcategories based on specific popular musical styles have also emerged: Dreamgirls (1981) is a Motown musical, and City of Angels (1989 ) represents the jazz musical.

JC Superstar

Rent

Dreamgirls

The pervasiveness of popular musical idioms in musical theater is one factor in the development of a related genre, the jukebox musical. Shows in this genre, also sometimes called “compilation shows,” consist of existing pop songs, whether by a single group or artist or by different ones from a particular era: Mamma Mia! (2001), Movin Out (2002), Jersey Boys (2005), and Priscilla, Queen of the Desert (2011) belong to this category. A few 21st century original rock musical productions include Spring Awakening (2007), Passing Strange (2008), Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson (2008), Rock of Ages (2009), Next to Normal (2009), American Idiot (2010) and Jagged Little Pill (2019).

Mama Mia

Jersey Boys

Jagged Little Pill

Hamilton was a groundbreaking musical created by Lin-Manuel Miranda that premiered on Broadway in 2015. This innovative production reimagines the life of Alexander Hamilton, a Founding Father of the United States, through a diverse cast and a contemporary blend of hip-hop, R&B, and traditional musical styles. Through its dynamic storytelling, catchy songs, and thought-provoking themes of legacy, ambition, and the cost of power, Hamilton has garnered widespread acclaim, cultural significance, and numerous awards, reshaping the musical theater landscape and attracting a diverse and passionate fanbase.

Hamilton

Intersections with Film

The musicals relationship with film has been a significant part of its history. Many of the great shows of the 1940s and 1950s were made into well-known films, some of which won Oscars for Best Picture and have become known as classics (such as West Side Stony My Fair Lady, and The Sound of Music). And some musicals that began life as films were produced on the stage, such as Rodgers and Hammerstein’s State Fair, Lerner and Loewe’s Gigi, and Singin in the Rain. The Disney variety, such as The Lion King and Beauty and the Beast, represents particularly interesting crossovers from screen to stage. (These are sometimes called “movieals”; they also qualify as megamusicals.)

Different kinds of crossovers are stage shows that are adaptations of nonmusical films, of which The Producers represents a successful project, setting a record in 2001 for winning a total of twelve Tony Awards. Mel Brooks’s show, starring Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick, started out as his 1968 film, which starred Gene Wilder and Zero Mostei. The musical movie version featuring the original Broadway duo (joined by Will Ferrell and Uma Thurman) came out in 2006.

Producers

Another show with a similarly circuitous route is the campy Little Shop of Horrors: the popular stage show of 1980, based on a bizarre science-fiction movie from 1960, was made into a movie featuring Rick Moranis and Steve Martin in 1986. The award winning Billy Elliott (2008) was based on a non musical film, as were Nine (1982), Spamalot (2005), School of Rock (2015), and Beatlejuice (2019) to name a few.

Billy Elliot

Spamalot

Conclusion

by Jennifer Bill

Musical theater continues to evolve while reflecting the social, political, and artistic currents of each era. Through its fusion of music, drama, dance, and storytelling, musical theater entertains, inspires, and provides a platform for societal reflection. As it continues to adapt and reinvent itself, the legacy of musical theater stands as a testament to the enduring power of human creativity and expression, leaving an indelible mark on the world of performing arts.

Licensing & Attributions

Adapted from “The American Musical” by Margaret R. Butler from Theatrical Worlds edited by Charlie Mitchell

This work is licensed under a modified Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported License.

Edited and additional content by Jennifer Bill