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Today on Fable and the Verbivore, we’re sharing part 2 of a two-part series that digs into the storytelling found in musicals!

In this episode, we talk about a variety of musicals that are widely respected and have some great lessons to teach us — including: Fiddler on the Roof, Wicked, Hadestown, Phantom of the Opera, Dear Evan Hansen, Les Miserables, and Come from Away

Things like:

• Even if you’re telling a story that ends down, find the little moments of everyday magic in it

• Reprising or taking up a theme, moment, or a phrase again and giving it new meaning

• Digging in with dramatic irony and playing with what the audience expects

•  For morally gray characters, we often will root for them if we understand them

• Give your audience or reader something to anticipate or dread, and then surprise them

• If you’re going to kill off characters make them interesting and living as amazingly beautiful as possible

• Explore the conflict within characters as well as outside them

• Know where your destination is and let your scenes work together to reach it, so that it lands

• Pay attention to the order that you tell a story and make sure you’re not diluting things by telling it out of order

Towards the end of our conversation, we dig into the musical Hamilton and the many ways it’s a MasterClass in storytelling. From the use of the character Aaron Burr to walk us through the wide range of songs and scenes, the POV shifting combination of “Helpless”/”Satisfied”, the wide range of emotions from “My Shot”/“You’ll Be Back”/”Dear Theodosia”/”Wait for It” that none-the-less build to a cohesive whole, and the staging in the last 20 seconds that help land the punchline of “Who Live, Who Dies, Who Tells the Story”.

We hope you enjoy this episode! Keep reading, writing, and putting your voice out there!

Into the woods,

Fable & The Verbivore

Notes:

We mention several different musicals, songs, and moments throughout this episode. Here are a few:

• Wicked - I’m Not That Girl / I’m Not That Girl (Reprise)

• “Notes/Twisted Every Way” songs from Phantom of the Opera

• YouTube Video of Last 1:25 of Hamilton on Disney Plus

The Verbivore mentions the leitmotifs that come together in Hamilton’s “Who Lives, Who Dies, Who Tells the Story”. Leitmotifs are a recurrent theme throughout a musical or literary composition, associated with a particular person, idea, or situation.

Musicals Mentioned:

• Fiddler of the Roof Broadway Cast by Jerry Bock and Sheldon Harnick

• Wicked Broadway Cast by Stephen Schwartz

• Hadestown Broadway Cast by Anaïs Mitchell

• Phantom of the Opera London Cast by Andrew Lloyd Webber

• Dear Evan Hansen Broadway Cast by Benj Pasek and Justin Paul

• Les Misérables Broadway Cast by Alain Boublil and Claude-Michel Schönberg

• Come From Away Broadway Cast by Irene Sankoff and David Hein

• Hamilton Broadway Cast by Lin-Manuel Miranda

Music from:https://filmmusic.io
‘Friendly day’ by Kevin MacLeod (https://incompetech.com)
Licence: CC BY (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)