If you open your mind...

Oh the thinks you will find
Lining up to get loose!

Except that I can't seem to think of anything to write lately. Nothing blog-worthy that is.
So I figure it's time to remind myself that I've never payed much attention to what is traditionally considered blog-able anyway.

I have something to rant about and what better place to do it than on my blog. I've ranted about it twice recently on different discussion boards that I look at occasionally when I've nothing better to do on the internet. I need to type the definitive rant on the subject and have done with it. And so, without further ado; an original Zita Louise rant for your enjoyment, (or not). And (so much for the 'without further ado' part) I would like to dedicate this rant to Leah.

"I don't really like Musicals."

Oh, I could site lots of people as having said this to me. The reasons behind their dislike are somewhat varied and sometimes justifiable. I can respect people's opinions though I am prone to think they just don't fully understand musicals. Or something is wrong with them that prevents them from appreciating musicals. I think of musicals as being pretty universal. There are too many great musicals out there for any person to lump all musicals together and say they don't like them. So this is a defense of the Musical at it's best.

Music is a very potent form of communication and expression. It is a universal language and perhaps the most powerful manipulator of human emotions. Background music in a movie can make an audience cry or scream or laugh. If you don't believe me, watch this. (Thanks Heidi) A song intensifies the power of music by adding a human voice. Music gives ordinary words new layers of meaning.

Another form of expression that is incredibly powerful in human culture is a story. A story, whether fact of fiction, has the power to change the way we think about the world. Everyone has heard a story at one time or other in their life that has changed us forever. Lord of the Rings comes to my mind, of course. When you're on a hike and you feel like you'll never get to the peak, you think of Frodo and Sam on Mount Doom and you keep going. (For me it's Faramir under the shadow of the Nazgul but that's another rant all together.)

A musical is, of course, more than just lots of songs, and more than just a story. It combines both, I think, the most powerful forms of expression known to man. That said, there are musicals that don't live up to this power at all. But I'm not ranting about bad musicals so I'll not try to excuse or defend them. I'm ranting about musicals that wield that power effectively.

"The songs are SO cheesy!"

The problem with this objection is that it comes from a cynic. In real life most of us loose the ability to wear our hearts on our sleeves at an early age. It's kind of sad sometimes. The theater, like all forms of entertainment, is a form of escape from the "real world." But it is an escape to a world that looks remarkably like ours only not so hard to figure out. In a play you see more of the 'big picture' than you will ever see of the big picture of your life. A song in a musical, more than other forms of song, is a raw expression of emotion. Listen to Shadowland from The Lion King.
This is not Cheese. It's raw emotion channeled into song. You have to be willing to empathize with her. Which means you have to let yourself believe that she is real. If you are not willing to be taken in, you can only describe it as cheesy.

"Those musical actors are hired for their singing and they can't act."

The greatest actors in the world are the ones that can act and sing at the same time. They are fewer than the ones who can do one or the other well, but they exist. Musical theater at it's best has a breed of actors a step above both actors and singers.
There's the other side to that coin too. If you listen to the new movie version of Phantom of the Opera it is apparent that they got Garard Butler to play Phantom because he could act, not because he could sing. He does pretty well anyway. But he's not a singer.
This is what a great actor and singer sounds like:
She's got a powerful voice and uses it really well to convey that raw emotion. It's a harshly honest expression of how she is feeling. You can't really express that without music and even in song it's a really hard thing to get right. As an actor you have to be able to be vulnerable. There is nothing harder to act than vulnerability because to act it you have to BE vulnerable and very few people do that easily. (And actors are abnormally bad at it by nature. It's like asking them to act truly humble. *giggles*)

"It's so silly. They go along and then they stop and sing a song."

Some stories have music in them. (The Sound of Music) Some have musical themes running through them a little more subtly (The Secret Garden). These make the best musicals. In a good musical it's the most natural thing in the world for people to start singing. You run out of words at some point; the only way to continue is to sing. A great musical uses the songs to do all sorts of great things that can't be done in other theater forms. Where a monologue would go to let the audience in on a point of the characters development, feelings or deliberations, there is a character solo or a chorus number that describes a character as the community see him. Where there would be lengthy scenes of exposition there is a song that takes care of all explanation in a matter of a few entertaining minutes. In that dreadful place in Act II when you can't think of anything to add variety to your steadily unfolding plot, you throw in a comic musical number and play out a key plot twist in the middle of it. They help dramatize the passage of time, changes in character, set conflicts, let the listener in on things that characters cannot know. A song externalizes things that that cannot come out in words alone; an underlying message in story, a conscious (or subconscious) desire or motivation. You can sum up everything you want to audience to walk away with in your closing number. You can open and close the show with the same song and the audience understands what they didn't at the beginning.

In real life we don't just stop and start singing about what we are feeling or thinking. Well, I do sometimes, but I don't make up the song on the spot and someone who feels the same way doesn't magically know the song and start singing harmony. (the best we can do it "Me to!") But creating a world where that is pretty ordinary is a very uplifting art form indeed. I can think of a few musicals that could get a whole rant all to themselves. I may be coming back to this topic.

Long live the Musical!