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Early Musical Theatre In The Early 1900s

1065 Words5 Pages

In the 1800s to early 1900s, minstrelsy started to become prevalent in the theatre community, appealing to the people of the lower class. It unfortunately consisted of only hateful material, and racial discrimination. This lasted for nearly the entirety of 1800 and the early parts of 1900. While this was a form of light, even if hateful, entertainment, it did not compare to other shows going on during this time period. The more prominent shows that people saw in theatres contained some songs, but were not yet considered to be musicals. Some were simply regular plays, with a few songs thrown in to entertain the audience further. This eventually led to the invention of ballad operas. Ballad operas took popular tunes of the day and changed the lyrics of the songs to comedically fit their purpose in the plot. The form of early musical theatre that is closest to the musical today is the French and Viennese Operettas. These featured romantic storylines, new scores, and used characters that were considered upper class, as opposed to other operas that used characters that resembled criminals. This type of operettas resembles shows many shows that are playing in New York now. Variety shows were a form of entertainment from the late 1800’s. Most featured …show more content…

The fandom was losing interest. The crowd were the ones deciding what shows stayed on Broadway. At this point, Broadway musicals were starting to die, causing worry among the crowd. “New musicals required the backing of multi-million dollar corporations.” Shows like RENT, which were popular with the musical theatre fandom, were funded by smaller corporations. (Kenrick 28 May 2018). RENT was a rock opera. Rock operas had existed as early as the 70s, but RENT was one of the shows that really brought it to light. Rock operas usually started out as concept albums, or movies. They were designed to speak to their target audience in a way they could understand, (DK

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Eleanor W. Traylor essay, Two Afro-American Contributions to Dramatic Form, describe how in the black theatre was, explains the styles of what Afro-American is and the effects. She also explains her arguments; which are what are the minstrel shows and slave narrative. When reading this essay it explains how during this time period oral tradition of black slaves provided a substance of how American choose the dramatic form. This is when the beginning of professional stage an Afro-American theatre was born. What is minstrel shows?

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