This film features how Oscar Hammerstein and Rouben Mamoulian created a new genre in American theatre, the musical. The following artists are featured: Stephen Sondheim; Agnes de Mille; Bob Fosse; Harold Prince; Joseph Papp; Ken Russell; Lorenz Hart; Richard Rodgers; William Hammerstein.

Combining music, dance and dialogue to tell visually and emotionally engaging stories, Musical theater can be traced back to ancient Greece, where musicians would often accompany lines delivered by actors. But it wasn’t until the late 19th century that musical theatre took hold in America.

When two or more notes sound together, harmony occurs. This interaction of pitches, understood in vastly different ways around the world, is analyzed here in jazz, chamber music, Bosnian ganga singing, early music plainchants, and barbershop quartets.

Melody— the part of music we most often remember— is examined here both scientifically and poetically, from a strict sequence of pitches to a group of notes "in love with each other." We see and hear melodies shaped, elaborated, and developed within Western classical music, the Arabic maqam tradition, Irish dance music and sean-nós singing, and Indian raga.

Marking time and moving through our bodies, rhythm has a special relationship to both musical form and worldwide dance traditions. How rhythm structures music is examined through the American marching band, North Indian tala, Japanese shakuhachi tradition, West African drumming, and Afro-Cuban dance music.

Radio 1 presenter Alice Levine meets Kaffe Keating, the actor who plays Christopher in the hit West End play The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time, to learn how using video and lighting design can enhance storytelling. Kaffe shows her some of the effects from this highly technological production, and explains how they can be more flexible than naturalistic design. Alice then talks to Finn Ross, the video designer for the production. He explains that budget limitations can mean creative challenges, and that video and lighting can be excellent ways of telling a story in a non-naturalistic way.

New instrument types and new electronic media for distribution are obvious results of technology, but so were the first bone flute and the first stretched catgut. How technology affects music is examined here in a case study of the flute, and in an examination of developing recording and composing technologies where the roles of composer, musician, arranger, and conductor begin to fuse.

An excellent resource from Ontario College Libraries. The Digital Media module teaches how to plan, create, edit, and share professional-looking videos using a variety of tools and resources.

Many successful theatrical productions that begin on the stage eventually find their way to being transformed into films. Usually they're significantly adapted to go from stage to screen. It's extremely rare that the same cast who performed in an original production gets the chance to re-create those roles on film, but occasionally they do. What an interesting creative task that must present to the actors involved.

One of the joys and challenges of being an actor is the unpredictable nature of what new character may enter your life for some period of time. But what about the actor who plays the same character on a television series year after year? What are his or her challenges? Is there a point where it’s hard for them or their audience, to know where the actor’s personality ends and the character’s begins? How does the actor deliver a believable and engaging performance under the daily stress of television production?

An elderly comedian was quoted on his deathbed as saying, “Dying is hard but comedy is harder.” On the other hand, Charlie Chaplin said in his autobiography, “All I need to make a comedy is a park, a policeman and a pretty girl.” Surely the truth lies somewhere in between. What does make something funny? How do stand-up comedians become actors? Is it possible to teach an actor to be funny? What is this thing called timing?

As the famous acting teacher Robert Lewis said, “The problem with acting is that the better you do it, the more everyone thinks they can do what you do.” Never has this been clearer than in film acting. Film acting is not like operatic singing or ballet dancing, which easily proves to the audience that the performers can do things that the viewer cannot. On the contrary, film acting is based on creating people that seem real, just like you and me.

Music and acting…there was a time when they were inseparable. But today we have divided these two great art forms and we only put them together in the opera and the musical. How does the music influence an Actor’s work? Does the word lead the music or does the music lead the word? Just how does an Actor work through a song?

The power of Shakespeare’s plays still makes them among the most attended theatre events in the English-speaking world. The plays also continue to attract high quality actors in all phases of their careers. What is the allure of a Shakespeare play? Why are the plays still so popular and why do actors still want to work on classical texts?

This documentary profiles Canadian actor Christopher Plummer of the Shakespearean Theater, best known as The Sound of Music’s Captain von Trapp. In his dressing room, Plummer dons his make-up and prepares to enter stage as Cyrano de Bergerac.

In a space outside of time, Indigenous playwright Yves Sioui Durand encounters the masks that have been created for his plays over a period of more than 30 years. Inhabited by the spirit of the Elders, these faces influence the actors’ every move as they bring to life the memory of the First Peoples of the Americas.

This short film depicts how a small Canadian city, bearing the name of Stratford and by a river Avon, created its own renowned Shakespearean theatre. The film tells how the idea grew, how a famous British director, international stars and Canadian talent were recruited, and how the Stratford Shakespearean Festival finally became a triumphant reality.