History of Musical Theater OutlineMusical theater is a unique adaptation of Western classical theater that uses music, songs, spoken dialogue, acting, and dance to convey humor, pathos, love , anger and all the other possible feelings of human experience ad infinitum. This is perfectly described by an EY Harburg quote, a favorite of my professor and famous producer, Stuart Ostrow, “Words make you think a thought. Music makes you feel a feeling. A song makes you feel a thought. This is the very characteristic that has allowed musical theater to not only survive but to have a continuing impact on humanity throughout history, from the theater's humble, ancient antecedents to the multimillion-dollar institution of the modern musical on Broadway. It has consistently been proven that although humanity's technological advancements and the means by which information is conveyed to the masses are ever-changing, musical theater will always remain a defining cultural trait of humanity. The very antecedents of musical theater can be traced back to 5th century BC Europe, where music and dance were common elements for staging comedies and tragedies in Greek theatre. Famous playwrights such as Aeschylus and Sophocles composed their own music to accompany their plays and choreographed the choir's dances. This trend would continue into the third century before the Common Era, most well represented by the Roman comedies of Plautus which similarly included classical song and dance routines to be performed in coercion with orchestrations. However, the Romans began to incorporate their own engineering advances right on stage with the inclusion of more complex stage equipment… in the middle of the paper… of society and its vernacular idiom. It was from America that the more straightforward style emerged, and in America it was able to flourish in a developing society less bound by nineteenth-century tradition." The musicals of the Roaring Twenties, borrowing from vaudeville, musical hall and other light entertainment, tended to emphasize famous actors and actresses, great choreography, and popular songs, to the detriment of plot. Typical of the decade were light-hearted productions such as Sally Lady Be Good. Although the books of these shows might have been forgettable, they featured stars like Marilyn Miller and Fred Astaire and produced dozens of enduring popular ("standards") songs by, most notably, Jerome Kern, the Gershwin brothers and Irving Berlin, Cole Porter, Vincent Youmans, and the team of Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart.