One of his friends led to the meeting of him and Richard Rodgers. The Rodgers and Hammerstein team quickly produced in a smash hit. After long and highly distinguished careers with other people, Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein ll joined forces in 1943 to create the most fruitful and successful partnership in the American musical theatre. OKLAHOMA!, the first Rodgers and Hammerstein musical, was also the first of a new genre, the musical play, blending Rodgers’ sophisticated style of musical comedy with Hammerstein’s innovations in operetta.
Heterosexual romance becomes important in the U.S. society as it resolves cultural and racial problems that arise in the 1950s. As Stacy Wolf says, “heterosexual romance stands in for larger struggles in the U.S. that are symbolically resolved in marriage” (9). An example of Wolf’s idea is expressed in many musicals during this time, such as in the musical South Pacific by Rodgers and Hammerstein. In the musical, racial tensions are resolved with marriage.
A lot of developments were being made in the 1942-1945 time period. The US started to really get involved with World War ll, and race wars were breaking out in a number of major cities. Even with all of this madness going on Richard Rodgers & Oscar Hammerstein ll were able to create two beautiful shows, Oklahoma! and Carousel. These two amazing pieces of theatre have some dynamic characters that shed light on the rural American economic, social, and sexual complexities of that time.
Gypsy Carousel. South Pacific. The Sound of Music. Oklahoma!. Each of these now well-known musicals would not exist today if not for the partnership of Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II.
I think the portrayal of woman in popular literature does not change much in the thirty years. In both the book The Natural and Christine, woman are used as a tool to depict the characteristics of the male main characters. In The Natural, the role of Memo Paris is to reveal the naïve and innocence of the main character Roy Hobbs. Memo represents evilness in the book and it affects Roy negatively. In Christine, the “strange car” Christine is presented as a female character.
Jacqueline Kelly’s book “The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate” takes place during the hot summer of Texas in 1899, Calpurnia; the main character, is trying her best to stay cool, so she decides that she will cut off one inch of her hair each week. She makes many discoveries, goes on adventures with her grandpa, and most of all, she strongly dislikes her “girlish” roles. One lesson that the story suggests is that even though specific genders have their own roles, it's actually okay if you want to do things that are unspecified for your gender. One example of how she doesn't like doing girly things, was when Calpurnia’s mother called her from her room to the kitchen to learn how to bake apple pie, while calpurnia has no intentions of learning how to do that. “There's no need to look like that, it's only a cooking lesson.”
Rodgers and Hammerstein not only contributed to the mass of musical theatre genre but they completely reworded it and made it completely different to what it was known as before the 1943. When Oklahoma! came on the scene in 1943 it as the first of its kind, combining Rodgers sophisticated comedy within the musical and Hammerstein’s lyrics. The Broadway show was unique and the first of its genre, it involved an incredible and deep story line along with amazing talents showcased throughout the musical. Rodgers and Hammerstein Introduced story telling in a different way, even though every musical included songs they never quite make a shift or difference in the story line.
The battle for ladies ' rights seethed on all through the '60s. Ladies started to feel disappointed with the straightforward lives they as of now lived and they needed change (Document G). Not able to acquire lucrative employments and equivalent rights in the work environment, ladies were living as "peons" in a nation where everyone should be equivalent under the law. The battle for equivalent political rights was likewise joined by a radical social unrest. The "sexual upset" was begun when the conception prevention pill was presented in the mid 1960s.
Women's personal freedom had also came about. They started to dress with a sexual look. Such as short skirts, smoking,etc..
Most theatre is either based on movies, books or history and sometimes a combination of two or three. When trying to revamp the old using a fairly new form of music will cause the viewer to look at that moment differently. Another aspect of this style that makes it a successful fit for history and politics is the speed and the ability to pack a lot of information into a song. This is favorable for history because often history has a monstrous amount of
Even those women, when they were allowed to create music, were often limited in what they could write. One woman who was big in the era was Clara Schumann. Clara's parents taught her how to play the piano at a young age causing her to be a woman in the 19th century with a well-known musical
This is especially visible when Dolly Parton broke through the (at the time) male-dominated country music industry (Library of Congress). Dolly Parton gives female perspectives and voices in her songs which was not common in country music then. Country music written by a female who was willing to speak out was impactful and influential to many people. One example of this is Dolly’s first top-forty hit Dumb Blonde (Country Music Hall of Fame). Dumb Blonde is about a woman thriving after being left by a man.
Nicholas Waldron The Changes and Motives of the Roaring Twenties HIST 151-005 History Since 1876 “I pledge on my honor that I have not received or given any unauthorized assistance on this writing assignment.” The 1920s were an age of dramatic social and political change. For the first time, more Americans lived in cities than on farms.
“A Doll House”: The Righteous Deception Henrik Ibsen, the writer of the play “A Doll House,” provides insight on self-righteousness when the character Nora is faced with assisting a loved one and the deception that arose from it. Nora has the most extenuating circumstances for her reasons of dishonesty within the play. Her deceitfulness is created through criminal applications, social expectations, and fear of her husband. Unfortunately, the biggest fabrication, revealed at the end, was the falsehood she said to herself. All of Nora’s deception begins as an act of love for her husband, Torvald.
Feminist theatre came into being as a by product of the experimental theatre movement of the 1970s’ and 1980’. It was an alternate theatre which enabled women to explore their creative talents on stage independently. Feminist theatre served as a means of constructing an exclusive feminist discourse on stage that questioned the patriarchal norms of female subjugation. Its movement was towards the construction of a theatre space where women are no longer mere stage props. They started functioning as the creators of drama rather than being confined to the roles of wife, lover, mother or lunatic.
