"There's a place for us,
Somewhere a place for us."
- Maria and Tony - West Side
Story

When the spoken word simply can't convey deep emotions, there is song. Musicals can tell epic tales and paint a huge canvas with a chorus of voices, or tell an intimate story with an isolated solo. Big or small, they reach deep into audiences and make them tap their toes, get up and dance, or weep with despair.

Perhaps the first musicals were the Greek dramas, which utilized a chorus with either chanted or sung lyrics that helped move the story along. Most modern musicals follow a conceit that characters are permitted to express themselves through song (and dance) as if it were as normal as making a phone call. This hyper-reality extends to the language used in songs as well, which can be fully formed songs with stanzas and rhymes or just a melodic extension of the character's normal dialogue. Songs can be written specifically for the production, or can borrow existing music with a compatible theme. Musicals are a malleable genre, as they can run from tragic drama to high farce. Successful musicals are not always plot driven or sometimes even lack strong characters, but they nearly always touch on universal themes and enduring ideals.