Talk:Musical theatre

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This article is part of WikiProject Musical Theatre, an attempt to build a comprehensive and detailed guide to musical theatre. If you would like to participate, you can choose to edit the article attached to this page, or visit the project page, where you can join the project and see a list of open tasks.

This article is part of Wikipedia's theatre coverage, and has come to the attention of WikiProject Theatre, an attempt to create a comprehensive and detailed resource on the art of theatre on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate in the project, you can choose to edit the article attached to this page (just like any other article!), or visit WikiProject Theatre, where you can join the project and see a list of open tasks.

Contents 1 Broadway Database 2 History 3 Page Organization 4 Images 5 Redirection from "Musical Comedy" 6 Not so 7 Introduction 8 "Theater"? Not "theatre"? 9 Music theatre vs Musical theatre 10 Crediting Casts 11 Musical comedy again 12 About the Introduction 13 Merge 14 instrumentation: musicals/opera 15 limitedgeographicscope 16 Spelling of Theater/Theatre 17 Musicals/Opera, etc 18 British musical theatre, 1875 to 1920 19 List of representative musicals in intro 20 Chinese/Indian and other non-western traditions 21 videos 22 Theater/Theatre

[edit] Broadway Database

I just wanted to make my fellow Wikipedians aware of a wonderful new web-site on the theatre, the Internet Broadway Database. There have been full page ads in "The New York Times" in recent days touting it and I finally tried it today in writing an article; very useful site--like the Internet Movie Database, but appears more professionally done. It's here. PedanticallySpeaking 14:30, Sep 2, 2004 (UTC)

• ????? It's not new. A very useful site, but not new. I've been using it for at least a year... and http://www.archive.org 's wayback machine shows it's been around since late 2001. [[User:Dpbsmith|Dpbsmith (talk)]] 18:14, 2 Sep 2004 (UTC)
• I had been unaware of it until the ads this month in the Times. PedanticallySpeaking 19:47, Sep 22, 2004 (UTC)

[edit] History

I wanted to get something written for the history section so that at least there would be a framework of sorts for anyone else who wants to contribute. I'd love to see a much more complete development, whether in this article or in a separate "History of musical theater" article. I feel somewhat confident writing about the modern stuff, but the farther back the history goes the less knowledge I have. It'd be great if someone could flesh out the early history (pre-1940) much more fully.--Kevin Marshall

[edit] Page Organization

I added a section describing some things about the production and writing process. I'm really not sure what the best way to organize the page is. Right now it's mostly comprised of a history section with other stuff tacked on before and after. The stuff afterwards is fine, but we need a way to get all the information that needs to come before the history section well-organized and make sure all the proper information is there. Hopefully I've at least laid the foundation for that. I think most of the information we should have is up there. Kevin M Marshall 15:05, 14 Dec 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Images

Note: this page currently has many images uploaded by User:SFTVLGUY2 from the period when he was labeling everything as a "screenshot", although many are clearly not screenshots. (Earlier this user dubiously claimed everything was "PD"). If anyone can identify the sources of these images and change the image tags as appropriate on the image description tags, this would be very helpful if we want to keep these images. (For those unfamiliar with Wikipedia image use and tagging policies, see Wikipedia:Images and associated pages). Thanks, -- Infrogmation 18:33, 12 Jan 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Redirection from "Musical Comedy"

I don't think that Musical Comedy should redirect to Musical Theater. Musical comedy should be more specific about comedy music. Normally songs that are humerous. Sometimes you get people who do stand-up with music / songs. This is not musical theatre.

That, I fear, would involve redefining terms for our own ends. Comic Songs would be a better term for such things. That said, Musical theatre and Musical comedies aren't *quite* the same thing - musical theatre is a broader term. Adam Cuerden 17:33, 28 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Not so

Musical Comedy in the way it is used is musical theatre. this is the way that the musical genre was described in the 1st half of the 20th century. The word "musical" itself derives from it.

• This may be so, but musical comedy has split off into a different category now. We write in the present, and musical comedy should be an article about that category of Musical Theatre. --Driken 05:17, 11 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Introduction

The introduction is way too long. I feel it needs to be shortened and have the information in redirected within the article. When I first came to the page, I almost exited thinking it was a Stub--not being able to see the contents.

[edit] "Theater"? Not "theatre"?

I'm American, but I've only ever seen theatre spelled theatre when referencing theatre. — ₀₉₁₈^BRIAN • 2005-12-14 01:57

• This is definatly an issue in this article. Please use the "re" spelling in an article spelled with "re". --Driken 05:14, 11 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Music theatre vs Musical theatre

There is a difference, but when you try and find the article for music theatre you get redirected to this pag MikeyB! 14:58, 28 January 2006 (UTC)

I edited the following sentence for clarity: "sometimes, although less often than not, spelled theater rather than theatre" to "sometimes spelled theater". UrbaneLegend 23:21, 19 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Crediting Casts

I'm not quite certain that this is the best place to ask this, but It'll do

Is it alright to post the Original Broadway Cast of a show on the show's page?

For example, IBDB has the Original Broadway Cast listed for Arthur Miller's The Crucible, but it's not listed on the show's page. Is it appropriate to provide the list there?

-Swiftblade21

[edit] Musical comedy again

I was looking up a work called The Geisha, clicked the musical comedy link, and found myself here, in an article almost entirely devoted to the Broadway musical. It seems to me that there ought to be a Musical comedy article which deals with works written between about the 1880s and WWII (and perhaps beyond) by composers such as Sidney Jones, Lionel Monckton, Ivor Novello, Noel Coward, Montague Phillips, Vivian Ellis, maybe Julian Slade, Sandy Wilson, and, in the USA, perhaps Victor Herbert, plus later composers such as Gershwin who called some of their works musical comedies. I am far from being an expert in this field, but I could cobble something up from stuff on the Internet. It would fill a gap created by the unsatisfactory current musical comedy redirect - just look at the list that links to that redirect page! Of course there should be links to this Musical theatre page (where a short para on musical comedy could be inserted), as well as to the operetta page (where, quite correctly, operetta is dealt with at greater length than here). --GuillaumeTell 15:29, 27 March 2006 (UTC)

I put in a little bit about Jones and Monckton, but it would be great if you could do a more thorough job. The British musical is not adequately covered until the more recent era stuff. Ssilvers 06:12, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] About the Introduction

Is it just me or does that last paragraph seem like a hidden jab at musicals? It's well written to be sure, but its bias for straight theatre, and I think it should be removed, any objections?

[edit] Merge

Bring the content of this article into Broadway Musical and remove this article. Living large 02:56, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] instrumentation: musicals/opera

I disagree that instrumentation is an important difference between musicals and opera. Most big-stage musicals have an orchestra that is very similar to many operas' orchestration, except with fewer strings, and all bets are off with modern operas, as their orchestras could be anything. Plus, there are chamber operas and varying kinds of opera orchestras, so there is no one kind of instrumentation used in opera. Similarly, Show Boat uses a different orchestra from Bat Boy, The Fantasticks or Little Shop of Horrors. So I suggest deleting the reference to intrumentation. I think bigger differences include (1) The importance of dancing by the principal cast; (2) the use of microphones; (3) the style of singing (in general). Of course, the line is blurry, no matter how you try to separate the two forms. Ssilvers 23:27, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

Since no one has disagreed, I went ahead and made changes along these lines. --Ssilvers 06:00, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] limitedgeographicscope

I don't see why we need this tag. The vast majority of musicals are either American or British. The intention of the Project is to put up good articles for all notable musicals, and I don't see what good the tag will do anyone. Ssilvers 04:08, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

"The vast majority of musicals are either American or British." <--- Yup. This is exactly what I'm talking about. Austria, Germany, France, and Japan all have active musical scenes. As so Hungary, Poland, and the Czech Republic. --Kunzite 04:16, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

OK, I wrote a good deal about those other musical scenes (as well as Bollywood), and I created numerous articles and stubs for Austrian, German and French musicals, as well as adding numerous names of Austrian, German and French musicals to the List of musicals. Therefore, I have removed the geographic tag. Having done all this research, I feel more confident that I was mostly right, originally. The vast majority of musicals over the last 150 years have been American and British musicals. Although the Austrian, German, French, Japanese, Canadian, etc. musicals scenes have become more active in the last decade or so, they have a lot of catching up to do. Plus, in the US, there are numerous musicals being created Off-Broadway, off-off Broadway and regionally, as well as on Broadway. The number of notable musicals from those places is particularly small compared to the number of notable American and British musicals. The Bollywood movie musicals and Japanese anime with music, are very vibrant scenes, but they're mostly films. So: I did more work on foreign musicals than I ever dreamed of doing! Your turn to do Eastern Europe and expand the description of the foreign musicals in the main article. -- Ssilvers 03:57, 15 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Spelling of Theater/Theatre

I finally took out this parenthetical: (generally spelled "theater" in the USA, though often spelled "theatre" by people involved in theatre).

We have been arguing about it forever. First of all, Theater is the normal spelling in the USA EXCEPT for usage by people connected with the theater. Second of all, it is stupid to keep arguing about spelling and has nothing to do with the article. It certainly does not need to be the first thing that readers see, as if it's the most important topic related to musicals. If someone wants to drop a footnote or something fine, but let's put the most important information in the intro. Since people everywhere except the US spell it Theatre, and most people in the USA who like musicals will have seen this spelling, let's use the Brit. spelling. --Ssilvers 15:46, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Musicals/Opera, etc

An anonymous editor added more to the intro about what is a musical and how to distinguish it from opera. I don't think that it helps the article to begin with this rather long discussion of what a musical is or isn't and the difficulty of defining it. Why not start out with a relatively short and snappy definition, and put the discussion of the difficulty of defining exactly what a musical is lower down under the table of contents? Opinions? --Ssilvers 18:04, 7 September 2006 (UTC)

I agree. --Usgnus 18:11, 7 September 2006 (UTC)

I concur. --Drenched 22:54, 7 September 2006 (UTC)

OK, I have moved the info into two paragraphs in the "Introduction" under the TOC and copy edited it. See what you think. --Ssilvers 00:57, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] British musical theatre, 1875 to 1920

I have spent that last couple of months adding info to Wikipedia on early British musicals and operettas from the 1870s to about 1920. There is now an article or stub on every musical and operetta from that period that ran for at least 400 performances in London (except for a few revues). BTW, London was a much hotter venue for musicals than NY during that period. See the introduction to this list of longest running plays in London and New York. I also added articles on most of the important British composers, writers and lyricists for musicals of the period (and some Americans) and on a number of producers. I am tired now, and my job is in jeopardy, so if anyone is interested in going into the articles and stubs for these musicals and beefing them up, please do so. In many cases, I have put links at the bottom of the articles that should lead you to more online information, such as links to song lists, cast lists and synopses. This site also has a heap of information about these works. Happy editing! -- Ssilvers 03:50, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] List of representative musicals in intro

The list of musicals named as examples in the article's intro was agreed to by members of the musicals project. Obviously, others could have been chosen, but this seems like a reasonable short list. Please do not change it without discussion here. -- Ssilvers 21:09, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Chinese/Indian and other non-western traditions

Look at the last several edits that introduced the non-European tradition heading and Chinese Opera info. Is this the right way to go with the article? -- Ssilvers 06:51, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] videos

do they generally release a video version of musicals?

[edit] Theater/Theatre

This spelling issue was discussed at length previously on this page, and the agreement was to use "theatre". Even though "theater" is a correct spelling in some countries, notably here in the U.S., "theatre" is the spelling preferred by theatre professionals, even in the U.S. U.S. dictionaries also confirm that "theatre" is a correct alternate spelling in the U.S. "Theater" is absolutely incorrect in most other English-speaking countries, so we agreed to use "theatre". Regards, -- Ssilvers 16:33, 2 April 2007 (UTC)