ABSTRACT
“You have to come into it thinking about how every piece works together, so just as you have to create a series of events that lead your protagonist into whatever journey you wish to take them on, with musicals, you have to come up with a reason for why your characters sing and how these songs function within the world you’ve set up. If you’re telling a story where singing and dancing exists within the world, how do you introduce that concept to the audience? If you’re trying to tell a story in the real world, how does the music break with reality? Does it involve fantasy sequences or some kind of motif that allows for music/singing to exist? For example, in Baby Driver, because the main character has a form of tinnitus, he’s constantly wearing headphones and listening to music to drown out the high-pitch ringing and because we’re following his perspective, the whole film is set to his soundtrack. In Chicago, the music sequences are played as Vaudeville fantasies, both to emphasize the period in which the story takes place and to address how the real-world characters truly see themselves and the world around them.” — Harrison Richlin, writer, Soundtrack and Love in America on the considerations and challenges of writing a musical drama
