THAR 281 1st Edition Lecture 11 Outline of Last Lecture I Eugene O Neil II Thorton Wilder III Famous playwrights IV Little Theatres a Provincetown Players b Washington Square Playhouse c The group theatre V Federal Theatre Project a Living Newspapers b Negro Theatre Project c The Cradle will Rock Outline of Current Lecture I Musical Revues a George Cohan b Florence Ziegfeld c Tin Pan Alley d Jazz These notes represent a detailed interpretation of the professor s lecture GradeBuddy is best used as a supplement to your own notes not as a substitute II Musical Comedies a George Gershwin i Porgy and Bess b Cole Porter c Rodgers and Hart i Pal Joey III Show Boat IV Movie Musicals a Buzzy Berkley Current Lecture American musical I Americans contribute jazz and musical theatre Musical Revues takes ideas of the three variety shows with a theme and twist They have collections of songs and skits based loosely around a theme They are filled with spectacle lights and costumes chorus girls and dancers a George Cohan had patriotic themes He was a producer performer director and writer His famous work was Yankee Doodle Dandy He has a statue in Times Square and he is the only person in Broadway to have one b Florence Ziegfeld was a producer He produced Ziegfeld follies which were extravagant spectacles Chorus girls in these follies were the best of the best beautiful and everyone wanted to be one of these Also these girls were very crazy costumes This was basically a clean version of burlesque c Tin Pan Alley was 28th street in New York City It was sometimes called America s song book This was the heart of American composition There were buildings filled with pianos for people to come to write songs These songs were short 2 3 minutes and fairly confined usually about love i Irving Berlin tried to descandalize rag time music He tried to ease people into this type of music often referred to a black music He wrote for many revues Ziegfeld follies musical shows and sometimes must for fun d Jazz was a combination of work music spirituals and European marches This type of music was strictly unique to America It favor brass instruments and drums which created a beat Eathal Waters used blues to bring jazz to II III IV audiences Josephine Baker was a performer of sing and dance She is famous for dancing in only a banana skirt She helped bring people to jazz With jazz there was an integration of theatres The Shuffle Along Revue This had all black performers Also this revue influenced song writers of the period The best seats in the house were given to black visitors Musical Comedies was a result of jazz It contained weak plots but therefore making it story It was just an excuse to sing and dance because most of the time they did not relate to the context of the story The songs for these comedies were written by popular composers and sometimes made it to the radio a George Gershwin wrote songs with his brother There was strong jazz influence in his songs His famous is Crazy for you of Thee I Sing and Porgy and Bess i Porgy and Bess 1935 takes place on catfish row SC a made up place It was sensibly operatic It required trained operas but the sounds were jazz Often called the great American opera or folk opera This was the next step in musical theater Also considered a master piece b Cole Porter was known for his wit and entrendre double or triple meanings He often contained the explicit side of love He was a play boy a jet setter He had rich friends all over He is famous for anything goes and kiss me Kate c Rodgers and Hart wrote 29 shows together in 24 years This is really incredible today one every three years is average This meant they had a show on Broadway every season They are famous for babes in arms the boys from Syracuse and pal joey i Pal Joey was a musical comedy and was the first with an anti hero The main character is Joey and ends without love or money not a happy ending The tone is unsympathetic which is different from what was going on This was the last show Rodger and Hart wrote together In 1927 Show Boat came out and was a direct reflection of musical comedies and theater Jerome Kern wrote the songs and Austin Hammerstein wrote the book and lyric This ay spans over four decades and follows the life of people living in cotton blossom show boat that goes down the Mississippi River In this musical the themes were racial discrimination marriage conflict and alcoholism The songs for this play was well related and arose from dramatic actions Movie Musicals were great for west coast producers because performers get paid one time and in the end it is fairly cheap The jazz singer emerged which attached the sound and voice There were new technical innovations such as sound and color a Buzzy Berkley was from Broadway He thought of tilting the camera up to see an angled bird view of the stage so the audience can see the patterns and performer formations and not just the front line performers