All tagged Funny Girl
Last week, while I was enjoying some time off, I decided to take a little sojourn to Pennsylvania. I gathered a few old theatre friends from my college days to accompany me, musical theatre folk who love to blast a showtune in the car and sing along. Knowing that they would expect me to be the DJ for this outing, I assembled a playlist full of the perfect songs for this kind of thing. I find the best songs for a road trip fall into one of three categories...
What is an "I Am" song, you might ask? Many people also know it as the "I Want" song, a song that comes early in the first act of a musical and that establishes our catalyst's point of view and sometimes their goal. The term "I Want" is not one I feel truly encapsulates what this song is and how it's placement in the musical affects the story to come. I Am", which used to be how these songs were identified by scholars, can include "I Want", but not vice versa. What you "want" is a subcategory of who you "are". Not every song that introduces a catalyst tells us what they want, but it most-definitely tells us who they are. So I choose the older term of "I Am" because I find it all-encompassing. I'm not trying to be difficult here, I simply prefer "I Am" because it better explains what the song achieves, especially to those just learning about musical theatre structure. But all semantics aside, some of the most-memorable and most impactful musical theatre songs are the "I Am" song and today's blog is a celebration of some of the best.
With the Tony Award nominations announced and the race setting in to be a pretty uneventful one since Hamilton appears to be poised to win most of the prizes, I started thinking about what these awards would look like if Hamilton were not in the equation. For the Best Musical prize, I think it is fair to say that the race would come down to a dead heat between Waitress and Bright Star, with Bright Star edging out the win on Tony night. This got me thinking about other years where juggernauts like Hamilton were a foregone conclusion, and what might have happened if those titles had never been in play. Read along and debate with me.
Most Broadway musicals have so many exciting things going for them: music, drama, great performers, inspired direction and choreography, great marketing campaigns. Then there is the physical production itself: the monumental sets, the breathtaking lighting and of course, the brilliantly designed costumes that bring the characters to life. Over the years, there have been some particularly memorable costumes, and some of these creations have moved on to iconic status. Today’s blog looks at some of the most iconic of all Broadway costumes, the fashion creations that have instantly intrigued and excited us through their perfection.
