Using Your Imagination During Musicals

One thing I love about musicals is that it requires you to use your imagination. The stage and cast can only do so much to make you believe in what you are seeing. You really have to use your imagination to believe in the location the musical takes place in or the setting that the scene takes place in. In a movie, it takes less imagination because everything  is there for you. You have to picture a road or entire house or rooftop or any actual setting or picture the entire city or country or made-up world. For instance at the barricades in Les Mis, you have to picture blood to believe an uprising is taking place and during “A Heart Full of Love”, you don’t exactly see a house, but just a gate so you have to picture you are at Cosette’s house. You also don’t see an actual road so you have to picture that as well. So you see, you have to use your imagination to picture everything.

Your imagination is a key part to seeing a musical. You are literally using your imagination to imagine so many things. Not only do you need to use your imagination to picture the entire scene, but you also have to be able to imagine the time period as well and that is something that the costumes play a part in. Using your imagination is a key part to the experience.


Author: mphtheatregirl


9 thoughts on “Using Your Imagination During Musicals”

  1. I am not a musial type of guy, but your writing is excellent. I am a photography guy. It is amazing how certain things can change your perception on everyday things. Your turn of phrase really puts people in your mindset. I usually will throw in some constructive criticism, and I’m going to just a little bit.
    You have to work on the word, “but.” It can be used to start a sentence, or continue one….BUT it should be used sparingly. The better option is to reword the sentence to make it deeper. “But’ is about the least illustrative word you can use, “and” falls right behind. Also, be very careful using prepositions at the end of a sentence.
    Your writing is not hard to follow. Quite the opposite. I will equate it to making chicken soup from broth, or real stock. If you take a few minutes to use stock over broth you will have a better soup. If you take a few minutes to minimize “buts” and prepositions at the end of your sentence, you will find a dialogue that represents what you really visualize.
    That said, you have a gift. Enjoy it!
    I have an issue with overemphasizing commas.


  2. I absolutely agree! Musicals are awesome for pulling out the imagination. It’s one of the things that I love most about musical theatre and I think that it’s one of the main reasons why I particularly love listening to cast recordings when I need to be creative and imaginative. They just really draw that out.


    1. In a movie, everything is there for you but still requires a bit of imagination. But when I am listening to the cast recording, I like to visualize the scene and listening to particular songs, I either visualize one character or two or how many tend to be in the song

      Liked by 1 person

    1. I saw Les Mis 5 times: those years were 2013, 2015 and 2017.

      2013- I was still at community college. They did a production of Les Mis. I saw it three times there. I saw it once with family and twice as an usher. It may be community college, but it was phenomenal.

      2015- I finally got to see it in London. I was England because the choir at my church was in residence at Bristol Cathedral and a pilgrimage was formed around that. The group’s first two and a half days were in London. My family went up two days early to spend more time in London and that was when I saw Les Mis in the West End. It was just me and mom.

      2017- I had two options of where I could see it on tour. I could either see it with my school in Greenville or with my mom in Charlotte. I choose Greenville.

      The West End production and Greenville production caused me to be an emotional wreck watching them.

      Liked by 1 person

      1. I want to see it at a small theatre to see how they can pull off a large production.

        Plus I hope to see it in Spanish: many people have asked me, how will you understand what is going on if it isn’t your native language? Well, not only have I studied Spanish since 9th grade and 5 semester in college, it is a musical I know so well that I will be able to understand what is going on in multiple languages.

        Liked by 1 person

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