History:Theatre Style Artist Collaborations/Theatre

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A "theatre" release is a recording of a work for the theatre involving music, songs, and/or spoken dialogue, occasionally also including dance. Typically these works are of a musical nature, but they may also be dramatic or comedic.

Applicability

This guideline specifically applies only to non-opera theatre releases. Opera is covered by a different style guideline. Depending on the release, it may be more appropriate to instead apply classical style. Theatre Style also applies to soundtracks for television or film versions of musical theater shows.

Guidelines

1. The release type should be Soundtrack, even for live cast recordings.

2. In most cases, the release group, release, recording and track artist credit should be to the work's composer(s), not the performer(s), lyricist(s), or librettist(s). Performer(s), lyricist(s), and/or librettist(s) should be indicated using advanced relationships. Exceptions:

  • The following commonly credited composer/lyricist collaborations should be expressed as joint artist credits to the composer and lyricist:
  • For non-musical theatre releases, artist credit should be to the author of the work.
  • The Special Purpose Artist of musical theater should be used for those cases where the composer is unknown.
Any further exceptions should be approved by the style council.

3. The release and release group titles should exclude extra title information information such as "Original Soundtrack", "Music from," etc., except that:

3a. The performance cast, with year, should be used (with two exceptions; see #5 below) in the release title and release group title.
Examples:
3b. "Broadway revival cast" is correct, not "new Broadway cast", as the 2004 Broadway cast is only the "new" cast until the next "newer" cast at some point in the future performs that same show in the same location. "Revival" should only be used within the cast information if "revival" or "new" appears on the liner; it should not be otherwise assumed.

4. For compilations of songs from different shows not compiled as part of a theatrical revue, or where the songs are performed by different casts of artists, do not include the cast information in the release and release group titles (unless it already is part of the title of the release). For these excluded compilation releases, if the release is not an Album release type, the cast information should be appended to each track's title. This should only be done for these compilations.

Cast information should be appended to each track title:
Cast should not be appended to each track title:
Note: The intent of this guideline is to avoid the creation of "Cast of (some show)" artists whenever possible. If it makes more sense to handle a special case differently, such as Glee Cast, differently, then common sense should overrule this guideline. Such exceptions where a "cast of" artist would be created should be approved by the style council.

5. Within the cast information, only proper nouns (e.g. 'London', 'Broadway', 'Senator Theatre') should be capitalized. All other words (e.g. 'cast', 'original', 'demo', 'revival') should be lower-cased.

Incorrect: Allegro (1947 Original Broadway Cast)
Correct:    Allegro (1947 original Broadway cast)

6. For the release type, and for interpreting guideline #4, 'compilation' should only be used for a true compilation. The presence of multiple complete or nearly-complete shows (whether different shows, or the same, as in the State Fair example in guideline #3) on the same release does not make the release type compilation.

7. For a live cast recording, two minor differences from normal Live bootlegs apply:

a. Exclude the colon after the date.
b. If the city is easily identifiable (e.g. Toronto, London, Paris, New York, etc.), other location information may be excluded.

Examples

Theatre Style applies:
Studio recording of a musical theatre work
Soundtracks to films based upon musical theatre shows. Theatre Style overrides the generic Soundtrack Style.
Demo cast recording for a musical theatre work.
Non-musical theatre release, using the author, William Shakespeare, as the artist.
  • Note that this example overlaps with Audiobook Style. There is no cast information included in the title, as there is a single reader, rather than a dramatic performing cast.
Live bootleg of a theatre cast with a known performance date.
Live bootleg of a theatre cast with an unknown performance date, where only the performance season is known.
  • Original and revival casts.
Studio recording of a musical theatre work
Theatre Style does not apply:
These are operas, thus Opera, not Theatre Style, would apply.
A musical theater-themed album is not automatically considered a 'theatre release'.