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In this article Valerie Lynn Schrader examines the musical Assassins through the rhetorical lenses of public memory and Kenneth Burke's theory of identification. Offering a close textual analysis of the musical's script and cast recording, she argues that Assassins, along with its audiences, serves to co-create a public memory of the men and women who attempted to assassinate Presidents of the United States of America. Her article contends that Assassins creates a chilling consubstantiality between the characters in the musical and theatregoers through Burkean identification, which may cause cognitive dissonance for many audience members. Through identifying key themes in the musical, she argues that these both connect with the assassins' motives and are common human experiences, serving not only to create public memory of the stories, but also to humanize the assassins and create a bond between audience and characters – while the song ‘Something Just Broke’ undermines this connection and encourages audience members to identify with the mourning American public. Valerie Lynn Schrader is Associate Professor of Communications and Interim Director of Academic Affairs at the Schuylkill Campus of the Pennsylvania State University. Her research focuses on rhetorical messages in theatre works, especially musical theatre productions. She is herself a classically trained lyric soprano/soubrette.

Stephen Sondheim has made it clear that he considers himself a \"playwright in song.\" How he arrived at this unique appellation is the subject of How Sondheim Found His Sound—an absorbing study of the influences on Sondheim's work not normally associated with musical composition, such as theater and film. The book also traces the development of Sondheim's musical language, showing how that language, forged before Sondheim had a successful Broadway show, appears throughout his career. Taking Sondheim's own comments and music as a starting point, author Steve Swayne offers a biography of the artist's style, pulling aside the curtain on Sondheim's creative universe to reveal the many influences—from classical music to theater to film—that have established Sondheim as one of the greatest dramatic composers of the twentieth century. Sondheim has spoken often and freely about the music, theater, and films he likes, and on occasion has made explicit references to how past works crop up in his own work. He has also freely acknowledged his eclecticism, seeing in it neither a curse nor a blessing but a fact of his creative life. Among the many forces influencing his work, Sondheim has readily pointed to a wide field: classical music from 1850 to 1950; the songs of Tin Pan Alley, Broadway, and Hollywood; the theatrical innovations of Oscar Hammerstein II and his collaborators; the cinematic elements found in certain film schools; and the melodramatic style of particular plays and films. Ultimately, Sondheim found his sound by amalgamating these seemingly disparate components into his unique patois.

Stephen Sondheim is widely regarded as the most important composer and lyricist of musical theater in the second half of the 20th century.Celebrating his 80th birthday, this new edition of Sondheim on Music finds him in these guided interviews expounding in great depth and detail on his craft.

GP Maria Waters tells Kathy Oxtoby about her love of performing

[...]Prologus reminds us that comedy offers “a happy ending, of course!” Comedy provides satisfying conclusions—perhaps with a marriage, a celebration, or the righting of social order. Comedy teases the disruption of social order: from the clever slave Pseudolus who wins his freedom to the Boy Bishop who rules the Feast of Fools to the farmworker replacing the patrón in the actos of El Teatro Campesino, comedy can suggest social and political alternatives to the status quo. [...]overlooked is analysis of the vocal and physical audience response to a comedy performance and the shared experience between performer and audience in the live moment.

[...]the vision of justice that Mary sang about in her famous song (Luke 1:46-55) gestates in the womb, and, if we have been made part of Christ's body, should continue to grow among us. Shelton highlights the surprising nature of Christ's Incarnation by returning to paradox in his final stanza: The way of salvation will always surprise, it creeps past defenses, makes fools of the wise: the sovereign of heaven in infantile guise! Shelton's final stanza suggests that the paradoxical nature of Christ's Incarnation points to the paradoxical nature of God's salvific work, which will always be different from what we expect-\"will always surprise.\" \"The sovereign of heaven\" comes to earth not with great pomp and circumstance riding a war horse to overthrow the powers of evil, but in \"infantile guise\" using the seemingly small and insignificant-seeds, yeast, children, sparrows, lilies-to demonstrate Christ's reign.