The Musical Theatre Composer as Dramatist: A Handbook for Collaboration

Dramaturgy is at the heart of any musical theatre score, proving that song and music combined can collectively act as drama. The Musical Theatre Composer as Dramatist: A Handbook for Collaboration offers techniques for approaching a musical with the drama at the centre of the music.

Written by a working composer of British musical theatre, this original and highly practical book is intended for composers, students of musical theatre and performing arts and their collaborators. Through detailed case studies, conceptual frameworks and frank analysis, this book encourages the collaboration between the languages of music and drama. It offers a shared language for talking about music in the creation of musical theatre, as well as practical exercises for both composers and their collaborators and ways of analysing existing musical theatre scores for those who are versed in musical terminology, and those who are not.

Speaking directly to the contemporary artist, working examples are drawn from a wide range of musicals throughout Part One, before a full case study analysis of Matilda the Musical brings all the ideas together in Part Two. Part Three offers a range of practical exercises for anyone creating new musicals, particularly composers and their collaborators.

Rebecca Applin Warner has been a freelance composer for theatre for 17 years, primarily writing musicals. She studied Music at Cambridge University, an MMus in Composition for Screen at the Royal College of Music, and completed her PhD two years ago. University teaching experience includes: tutoring third year dissertation students; Musical Theatre History; Performance Culture; Preparation to Research; Devising Musical Theatre; Acting Through Song; Making Performance and Musical Theatre analysis. She has taught on the Musical Theatre Writing Masters degree at Goldsmiths and the Musical Theatre Writing short module at Central. Previous publications include chapters in The Oxford Handbook of the British Musical and Reframing the Musical as well as publication in the Studies in Musical Theatre journal. She sits on the steering committee of the British Musical Theatre Research Institute.