MUS 124 HISTORY OF THE AMERICAN MUSICAL THEATRE SYLLABUS AND STUDY GUIDES INSTRUCTOR: PROFESSOR STEPHANIE ARRIGOTTI Office Hours Cedar 113 M-TH 4-5:15 Phone 445-4250 Email [email protected] Welcome to the class! I look forward to sharing with you the highlights of the exciting world of musical theatre from its beginnings through the present day. By the completion of this course, students should be able to: • Explain what makes scores and libretti effective, recognize character development and note the function of songs in integrated musicals. • Describe the various key players that create and present a live musical. • Identify the art forms that preceded the American musical and show their influence in current musicals. • Recognize major musical theatre composers throughout the last century and identify their major contributions. • Identify different types of musicals, including jukebox, concept and book musicals. • Discuss the plots and reviews of several current shows on Broadway • Engage in forums and write reports using college level writing skills. • Demonstrate the use of music and dance to develop plot and character in integrated musicals. Your competency in these objectives will be measured by your participation in forums, online texts, short reports and two proctored exams. Some general information about taking this web course Computer Skills Required: Word processing skills, including saving and retrieving documents. Basic internet skills, including, but not limited to: emailing with attachments, searches, navigation, specifying URLs or locations, etc. All internet students should complete an Online Student Orientation: https://wnc.instructure.com/courses/1065621 If you have any problems or questions about WNC Online, use the links and phone numbers listed at the bottom of this page. If you need someone on campus, call 445-3227 or email [email protected], the WNC Library Reference Desk. You can also get help in person by visiting the WNC Library Reference Desk on the Carson City campus. Transcripts of the lectures are available for the hearing impaired. Contact me for more information. Communication and Social Skills Required: I ask all students to email me during the first week of class to supply their current contact information. Often what is listed with Admissions is outdated and it is important that I am able to answer your questions and communicate with you. Be sure to have a functioning email address that you check frequently. When you ask a question within the course, it is sent to me as an email and I respond to it through email. It enables me to respond more quickly to your questions. I try to respond to your questions quickly, certainly within 24 hours on weekdays. You will find some forums in the course. This is an important part of the educational experience. Intelligent discussions will broaden your perceptions. Be prepared to offer insights, share music you’ve discovered, make statements, point out discrepancies, agree, and disagree. Take the time to read what your classmates say in the forums. Everyone comes to this class with his or her own previous experiences in musi- cal theater, and each of us can learn from others. Treat each other with courtesy and respect. Write grammatically, using appropriate capitalization, punctuation and correct spelling. You are participating in a college course, not texting your friends. Here is a rubric to show standards of writing grading practices: http://www.slideshare.net/eklauber/grammar-assessment-rubric You are encouraged to use the online English tutoring service if you need help with your writing: http://www.wnc.edu/studentservices/asc/ online/ Also, the reports should be in your own words - never copy/paste a website. Energy Required: There is an old rule of thumb that says that a three-credit course requires three hours of class and an additional six hours of study every week. Since we don’t have class time, this means you should invest about nine hours of study every week for this course listening to lectures, watching musicals and researching responses to the forums. I am listing the dates of each section of the course in this outline. It is important that you stay on track with these dates. Perhaps the most common reason students do not succeed in internet classes is that many students do not invest time in the course until the end of the semes- ter, then are unable to master the material in the remaining time. To prevent this, I am requiring that you complete the tests for each section by the date listed. Late exams will not be accepted. Late forums and assignments will be penalized. Ethics Required: It is, of course, very important that you do your own work and that you adhere to the codes of academic integrity: http://www.wnc.edu/poli- cymanual/3-4-5.php Downloading and using the video tapes or transcripts of these lectures outside of this class is not allowed. Text Required: You are not required to purchase a text for this course. You will reinforce much of the information contained in this course on two free web- sites: www.musicals101.com. and Broadway, The American Musical: http://www.pbs.org/wnet/broadway/. The material from the musicals101 website has also been converted into a textbook: Kenrick, Musical Theatre: A History. Amazon.com sells the Kindle and the paperback edi- tion for less than $20. While both the websites and the text have extensive useful information, they have far more information than what is required in this course and it is organized differently. In this course, I put the most weight on what still is presented today in theaters or shows that heavily influenced current repertoire. Consequently, this text is not required, only recommended. Instead, I require that students invest their money in opening a Netflix account so they can watch complete musicals. You need to get the type of account in which DVD’s are mailed to you (sometimes two at a time), as the selections you will be watching are not always available by streaming. You only need this account from February through April so you will need to pay for two months of service, as the first month is a free trial. There is a formidable list of musicals readily available on Netflix. I have listed more than 50 of them at the end of this syllabus that are well done and worth watching. You are required to watch 10 of these (speicified within the course) and encouraged to watch more. Not a scary request: watch movies on Netflix! A course on musical theater won’t make any sense if you don’t watch several musicals. Attending a live performance of a musical does cost more, but after seeing the lecture on how a live musical is created, you will appreciate the experience of seeing a finished product. I will negatively grade students who avoid watching full movies by watching clips on youtube and reading synopses on wikipedia. It is always obvious to me when a student does not watch the full musical. Your exams will have questions that can only be answered if you have watched the musical. Do your job. Pop some popcorn. Watch the musical. You will find a chronological listing of the shows and composers we are covering in each section. Since the lectures sometimes cover indi- vidual composers or types of musicals, this will help you see how all this information fits together. You will be asked to name composers from each era on your exams, so refer to these chronologies when working through the class. The canvas log in page is: https://wnc.instructure.com/login The student log in support page is: https://wnc.instructure.com/courses/1074625 Students can also call Canvas technical support for log in help or technical support 24/7 at 855-308-2493 How you are graded Your grade is computed as follows: PLEASE NOTE: WHILE THE RUBRIC INDICATES THAT A CERTAIN NUMBER OF POINTS ARE ASSIGNED FOR GRAMMAR AND FOR QUALITY OF RESPONSE, POSTINGS THAT DO NOT ANSWER THE QUESTION OR THAT ARE NOT WRITTEN IN COLLEGE- LEVEL WRITING WILL BE RETURNED TO THE STUDENT UNGRADED. STUDENTS WILL BE GIVEN AN OPPORTUNITY TO RESUBMIT THEIR WORK, IF TIME IS AVAILABLE FOR THEM TO DO SO. Forums 8% After most sections of the class, you give a little feedback - something to encourage intelligent viewing of the musicals and critical think- ing. Three sections of the course have a forum which reinforces material covered that week. The purpose of the forums is to provide a topic that encourages some thoughtful analysis and conversation. After posting your own entry, you need to read others’ forum post- ings and post an insightful response to at least one posting per forum. An example of a significant response would be, “I disagree that Gilbert and Sullivan were targeting Frederick in this show because...” Responses that will not earn credit are, “I love that song so much! Thanks for sharing!” These responses, while friendly, show a lethargic engagement in the course and poor interaction with your class- mates and will not count as forum participation. Each forum is worth 4% of your grade - 3% for your posting and 1% for your response to someone else’s post. You should post in forums during the week listed. While we appreciate hearing from you in the “Introduce Yourself” forum, that posting does not contribute to your grade. LATE POSTINGS WILL LOSE POINTS. THE LATER THEY ARE, THE MORE POINTS THEY LOSE. THE LAST DAY TO PARTICIPATE IN FORUMS AND ASSIGNMENTS IS MAY 9. YOU WILL NOT BE GIVEN CREDIT FOR POSTINGS AFTER THAT DATE.