Cirrus@Austlit

This paper examines the attempts by Australian theatre practitioners to write and produce commercially-orientated musicals, proposing that the industry has singularly failed to recognise the existence of a criteria of factors - including traditions, expectations and structural principles, which determine the Broadway (or American) musical as being distinct from other forms of musical theatre. The author argues that "the connotations emanating from these criteria are firmly positioned in the minds of the popular culture [and] thus to simply add music to a dramatic narrative or piece of theatre... does not always constitute a musical (81).