Musical Workshop Part 4 — Musical Theater Elements
After sharing his insights on story ideas and their suitability for dramatic staging, Dr. Kunze moves on to discuss a few of the special elements involved with a typical musical theater production.
1. The Fourth Wall
A theater stage is like a box with three walls. The action happens between those three walls and the audience watches from outside in — just like through a window. This is a commonly accepted form in the world of spoken performances.
A musical theater author must try to break down this fourth wall. He should create moments of direct communication between audience and performance, usually through a solo piece of one of the show’s main characters.
2. Dancing in Musical Theater
A good musical must have at least a couple of dance scenes. The author should keep this already in mind when selecting his story idea.
However, dance should never interrupt the flow of the action in musical theater, but rather support it and move it along.
3. Multiple Locations
The possibility of reaching across time and space, sometimes even during the same scenes, is one of the great elements of musical theater. By the strength of the music alone we accept quick changes to multiple public locations, dreamy visions, and surreal imagery.
Such creative freedom is not possible in spoken performances, and it should always be considered by authors of musical theater.
