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What Are The Hills Really Alive With?: Spectacle Versus Narrative Driven Musical Theatre, Kevin A. Hicks
What Are The Hills Really Alive With?: Spectacle Versus Narrative Driven Musical Theatre, Kevin A. Hicks
The Research and Scholarship Symposium (2013-2019)
American Musical Theatre is known for its entertaining qualities, but what holds the audience’s attention to stick around for the second act? Is it the dance numbers, the fancy lighting, and the spectacular numbers or is it the story and the characters? Musical theatre always uses a combination of the two elements, but one of two tends to drive an individual musical forward and engage the audience's attention. The conflict of emphasizing spectacle or narrative can bee seen initially at Musical Theatre's conception all the way down to recent shows written by Webber and Sondheim. Spectacle can be understood as …