Musical Workshop Part 5 — The Protagonist
In this episode of his musical workshop series, Dr. Kunze talks about the selection of the story’s protagonist. He emphasizes the importance of picking only one main character.
In any given story, it is no coincidence what happens to a certain character and how he or she deals with it. The story is driven by the actions of its protagonist.
The audience should find it easy to identify with the happiness or the suffering of the main character. He must be human like all of us — not all good and not all bad.
The protagonist should be proactive and full of initiative. She should have a unique personality and grow as the story unfolds.
This is the most important quality of a potential lead: He must change. She should have understood or learned something that she didn’t know at the beginning of the piece.
If the main character remains unchanged at the story’s end, he should not be selected as the musical’s protagonist.
