Musical Theatre!

 When is comes to theatre, it isn't just plays, that are all talk. In high school schools usually preform a fall drama then a musical in the spring. A musical plays are known as Musical Theatre. Some people usually prefer, musical theatre over just speaking, in plays. I think personally there both great. Musicals today are preformed every where. Some famous musicals you might have heard of, is Wicked, Phantom of the Opera, Les Miserables, A Chorus Line, and many others (those are just a view to name off the top of my head). Now don't get musical theatre confused with opera, they are NOT the same thing, but are the same in many ways. Opera usually has more singing, than Musical Theatre, they have a libretto which is text and a musical score. Musical Theatre involves dialogue, dancing, and singing. Opera as well can have some of these as well.  Where did Musical Theatre start? Well going back to Europe it actually started in ancient greek times. The ancient greece people often combined dance and song with their performances on stage. 

Going back to musical theatre, most historians will say the real first musical is The Black Crook, which premiered in New York on September 12th, 1866. It was actually a whopping 5 1/2 ours but still it had 474 performances. Usually with musical theatre, or theatre in general it reflects what was going on during the time period. Musical was booming during the 1920's 30's 40's and 60's but since then, people have been seeing that musical theatre, is starting to decline. Now, personally I don't believe so, but with the invention of movies and going to a movie theatre, people would rather go there. But with popular musicals such as Urinetown, they have had great success on Broadway. A great musical theatre performer would be the wonderful Kristin Chenoweth. Actors such as her, have had a great success with musical theatre, and have become very famous for it. This is only dabbing a little into the whole musical theatre, how it is constructed and what makes musical theatre so popular, is just something will have to talk about next time. Since I haven't shown a video just yet, I'd thought I'd post one of the famous Kristin Chenoweth. She is singing the song Glitter and Be Gay. Just click the link and watch, though this video does not really  have any dancing in it, but it's great to watch!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aVsLMxam21I

A source I used: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Musical_theatre