What can musical theatre dramaturgy learn from mythology?
Ahead of our ‘Hadestown’ event next week, we have been thinking about Mythology and Musical Theatre.
Mythology and theatre have always been intrinsically linked. Ancient Greek Theatre revolved almost entirely around mythology; combining music, dance and drama to retell familiar stories. Like most stories, myths involve characters, setting, conflict, plot and resolution. But they can also have their own strict set of dramaturgical rules. So what can mythology teach us about writing musicals?
1. Premise
Every collection of myths that make up a particular mythology have a story of creation. How was the world created? What are the hierarchies and rules of the world? How and why are we here? These creation stories always follow a set timeline and their driving force is change. If we take Genesis, for example, there is a period of seven days. On day one, there is light, and by day seven the whole world and everything in it has been created.
Creation stories are excellent at establishing premises. They ask fundamental questions about existence, while establishing very clearly the rules and natural laws of the world. It is often said that plays should exist in a closed room: we should know everything we need to know about the world from inside the play itself. In that sense, we cannot assume anything about the world of a play. Creation myths can show us how to build a world where no world was before. What events, in what order, created the world needed to tell this story?
This is even more crucial for musicals, which not only have rules regarding social organisation and formal structure, but also how music is created, received and understood through the show.
2. Time
Mythology has long attempted to make sense of our experience of time. Some mythology considers time to be cyclical: the mythology of seasons, of chaos and order, of destruction and peace. The Ancient Greeks considered two different concepts of time. They had Chronos; chronological, cyclical time, which is almost like the ticking clock. And they also have Kairos, which they classified as the right or opportune moment for action. Kairos is the epitome of living in the moment. Mythological concepts of time may give us the tools to understand time in non-linear and non-constant ways, and how time is connected to action in drama.
The way characters experience time is integral to how you tell your story. This is particularly useful to musical theatre, where music can be used to allow characters to more easily inhabit different concepts of time and space.
Thinking about how time is experienced by your characters, through dialogue and through song, will help audiences to understand their journeys through the show.
3. Gods and Mortals
A great deal of mythology focuses on tragedy driven by fate, suggesting that Mortals do not have free will, with Gods holding the higher power to change the course of their lives. Though contemporary theatre may not depict Gods as frequently in the traditional sense, it is not devoid of characters who can truly affect the world around them in the way that Gods do in mythology.
The power Gods possess in mythology is the power to change the fabric of the world. In most classical mythology, hierarchy is constant, and the laws of the world are constant and cannot be changed. But today, are we looking for something more? Are we looking for stories that can change the world?
In the world of your musical, are your characters Gods, or Mortals? Who has power over them? And do they have the power to change the world?
4. There is no author
All stories within mythology are part of a larger purpose, a larger cultural understanding, and a larger body of work that helps to make sense of the world we are in. Myths and legends have always been passed down, retold and adapted, but are rarely traced back to one definitive version. Storytellers of myths are in many ways subservient to their stories: they are the mouthpiece, but they are not the creator.
In musical theatre in particular, we often consider the binary of either an ‘original’ story, or an ‘adaptation’. This may be useful in explaining copyright laws, but it is not necessarily useful when considering the dramaturgy of a story. Every piece of art adds a new stitch in the fabric of our own mythology; a fabric that helps to make sense of our lives and the world around us.
Regardless of whether the story came from a dream you had, or from a book you read, writers should always ask themselves: what compels you to tell this story now?
So whether you’re a fan of folklore, or just looking for inspiration for your musical, there is so much still to learn from the stories we have been telling for millennium.
Learn More:
Want to learn more about dramaturgy within musicals?
Book Now for ‘Hadestown: Working on a Song’ with Ken Cerniglia and Anaïs Mitchell,
Wednesday 11th August, 8pm BST / 3pm EST
