Musical Adaptations of Plautus’ Amphitryon on Broadway and in Türkiye
Sitare BilgeThis study deals with the origin and definition of musical theater as a discipline throughout history and investigates A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (Shevelove & Gelbart, 1962) based on Plautus’ play Amphitryon, as well as the Turkish play Amphitryon 2000 (Dormen, 2000) in terms of musical farce as a sub-genre of musical theater from the perspective of the stage director. In this sense, the study uses these musical theater plays to form a joint identity in terms of their musical pieces, as well as the dramaturgy of the texts. In this way, the study provides a roadmap for stage directors and scholars using academic and scientific methods consisting of a detailed literature review over a conceptual and theoretical framework, period research, and an examination of the above-mentioned works considering the connections between them based on the collected data. As a result, this article presents the impact of American musicals on Turkish musical plays by showing the similarities and differences between them through the valuable contributions of the writer and director Haldun Dormen
Plautus’un Amphitryon Oyununun Broadway ve Türkiye’deki Müzikal Uyarlamaları
Sitare BilgeÇalışma, tarihsel süreç içerisinde müzikal tiyatro disiplininin köken ve tanım sorununa değinerek, Plautus’un Amphitryon oyunundan hareketle yazılmış A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to The Forum ve kendi kültürümüze ait Amphitryon 2000 eserlerini, müzikal tiyatronun bir alt türü olan müzikal fars bağlamında sahneye koyanın bakış açısıyla incelemektedir. Bu bağlamda söz konusu müzikal tiyatro eserleri hem içerdikleri müzikal parçalar hem de metin bazında dramaturjik açıdan incelenerek ortak bir kimlik oluşturmak için kullanılmış, sahneye koyana ya da araştırmacıya izlemesi gereken yolda akademik ve bilimsel bir yöntem sağlamıştır. Çalışmanın yöntemini, detaylı bir literatür taraması, kavramsal ve kuramsal çerçevenin oluşturulması, dönem araştırması ve edinilen bilgiler ile söz konusu eserler arasında kurulan bağlantılar ışığında eserlerin incelenmesi oluşturmuştur. İnceleme sonucunda ortaya konulan benzerlikler ve farklılıklar ışığında Broadway’den Türkiye’ye Amerikan müzikalinin Türk müzikli oyunlarına olan etkisi, yazar ve yönetmen Haldun Dormen’in de değerli katkılarıyla ortaya konulmuştur.
From its start, musical theater has always been in search of an identity. The shortage of written sources in Türkiye as well as persistent misconceptions have brought about complex contents and definitions.
To create order out of chaos among the performing art disciplines of a period is challenging but also important due to its cultural and artistic richness. As such, the big picture needs to be looked at, even if only briefly, in order to completely comprehend the foundations of the discipline of musical theater. If musical theater is not a musical play, then what is it?
Many music historians and musicologists have examined musical theater under two headings: musical comedy and musical drama. Even though musical theater has been studied under two headings in many sources, sub-genres also occur under the musical comedy genre such as musical farce and musical situational comedy, as well as under the musical drama genre, such as musical melodrama and musical romance (romantic musical). Meanwhile, musical shows are accepted as a separate sub-genre of musical theater due to not having a script but rather consisting of independent songs and funny sketches.
This study examines two musical farces inspired by Plautus’ Amphitryon: Shevelove & Gelbart’s (1962) A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum as one of the best examples of its kind on Broadway, and writer and director Haldun Dormen’s (2000) Amphitryon 2000. This article examines these plays in terms of both their musical pieces as well as the dramaturgy of the texts by providing an academic and scientific method for directors, actors, writers, composers, and scholars working in the discipline.
The plays A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum and Amphitryon 2000 trace a long journey from Ancient Greece to Rome, and then from Broadway to Istanbul. In an area where types of musicals nourish and improve each other, writers are inevitably influenced by one another as well. A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum and Amphitryon 2000 are both musical farces that have the general characteristics of the musical farce genre while demonstrating certain differences.
This study shows the most striking difference between Turkish musical plays/musicals and foreign plays to be related to the number of songs and transitional musical pieces within them. The plays by Turkish writers and composers have fewer songs compared to Broadway or West End plays. Also, these songs are not composed by a similar mathematical algorithm. The integration among text, music, and dance in Turkish plays is weak, which is why the stage director has to make an extra effort to compensate for it.
Compartments in musical theater are organically connected. When a dance or song sequence is taken out of a musical theater play, the dramaturgical structure is compromised, leading to loss of meaning. Therefore, the use of music in musical theater is not just there to emphasize the scene, but also to serve the dramaturgical unity of the story.
In the context of this entire process of change and development, one can say that musical theater is an interdisciplinary performance art that holistically narrates a story through acting (verbal dialogue, text), songs (music), dance, and all other auxiliary components of visual arts, thereby providing dramaturgical action.
This article must also examine the changes musical theater has gone through historically in order to understand, analyze, and create syntheses regarding the musical theater of today. When comparing Turkish and Western musical theater, the Turkish plays seem to have developed over a short period of time, and are therefore few in number. They have also usually been inspired by Western musical theater. The lack of a musical theater sector in Türkiye is one of the most important obstacles preventing a collective and sustainable production. Additionally, other cultural, social, economic, and political factors surely exist that have prevented the sector from developing. Musical theater in the past was also not a part of the curricula in many Turkish educational institutions. Having theater halls where big budget and big cast musicals could be staged undoubtedly enlivened the sector. However, one can see that the most salient and determinant factor in the development of musical theater in the world and in Türkiye pertains to the art policies of states.
