Exploring Original Cast Recordings as “Vocal Scripts”: Navigating “Vocal Omnivorousness” and Learning “The Sungs” of Musical Theatre

Abstract

An original cast recording is produced to prolong the musical theatre experience, serving as a sound souvenir, a marketing tool, and a means to a commercial end, contributing to a show’s overall success and impact. However, it also plays a part in performance practices, assisting singers and voice teachers in learning new repertoire, and navigating an omnivorous performance field drawing on a wide variety of vocal and musical styles and aesthetics to tell its stories. In this regard, the original cast recordings take on the status of so-called vocal scripts, here defined as sonic entities choreographing social interactions between players, making them objects of interest in performance research and performing arts pedagogy. Drawing on writings from the fields of musicology, cultural sociology, and voice studies, this article’s theoretical contribution is twofold; (1) on a conceptual level, offering insight into and establishing the term vocal script, and (2) from a vocal pedagogical stance, exploring the ways of listening involved when interacting with a multifaceted vocal script. This article argues for taking the original cast recordings seriously within the theatre profession as material mediators, playing active parts in the formations of vocal behaviors, vocal styles, vocal tastes, and vocal pedagogies.