performance report 2

I attended “side Show the musical” April 17^th. It was the last showing after they had been performing for the past two weeks. Since it was the last showing it would be obvious that this would probably be their best performance because they were able to review their past performances and fix up any mistakes that they made. Since it was a Broadway Musical the whole play was in song and dance and at the same time it tells a story to the audience. The musicians and the performers must work together in order for the musical to be in sync.

The music in the show was playing constantly throughout the whole play. I noticed that the tempo of the music depending on the mood of the play. When the play was sad and depressing then the tempo was slow and sounded gloomy, however when the play was happy the tempo was more upbeat and sounded happier. I couldn’t really see what kind of instruments they were using because they were in the back but I did here a couple of instruments such as the drums. The actors and actresses singing went along smoothly with the music playing in the back, which gave it a nice flow to the overall performance

There were two different types of performers in this play, the actors and the musicians. The musicians were in the pit located in the back of the stage and were covered by two big stages so you couldn’t really see them. When I first walked into the stage I didn’t notice the musicians until they started playing their first song, which let me know where they were. The actors and musicians were in sync because the flow of the music and the singing were together and whenever one song ended and the next one was starting it went along exactly when the actor started singing. The performers seemed calmed and new which song to play next, probably because it was their last show and they had the feeling for it.

Nearly every seat in the theatre was filled. I was sitting more to the back so that I could get sort of a bird’s eye view. Unlike the opera singing that I attended before where almost the whole audience had no idea when to clap for the performer, in this musical it was pretty obvious when to clap, which was basically after every song, because the actor would bow and would wait for an applause. The audience was very active they would clap intensely and would laugh at every joke, and seemed very attentive to what was going on. At the end of the musical the whole audience got up and gave a standing ovation for the performers hard work.

For the time and space the main thing for me was that I was not able to see musicians play. They were all the way in the back and were covered by the movable walls. That however did not stop the music from being heard clearly throughout the whole audience. I was sitting in the second to last row in the right corner which was pretty much the farthest seating area on in the theatre and I could hear the music clearly. The main actors and actresses had strong voices and I was able to hear them clearly too. However there were a couple of side characters who did not sing loud enough for me to here. Sometimes the characters would say a joke to the audience, and the only way that I knew it was a joke was because the first 5 rows bursted into laughter and the rows behind that seemed clueless as to what was going on so some characters also didn’t speak loud enough.

The different songs and tempo throughout the entire performance defines a Broadway Musical. Since the performance is live the musician’s instruments must be in sync with the actors singing in order for it to work. The different elements come together in order to bring out this music culture.