Connecting Emotion to Lyrics

Resource for Grades 6-12

| Citation

Media Type:
Video

Running Time: 2m 04s
Size: 7.6 MB

Source: Broadway or Bust

This media asset was excerpted from Broadway or Bust.

Resource Produced by:

Collection Developed by:

Collection Credits

Collection Funded by:

Funding for Broadway or Bust was provided by the Anne Ray Charitable Trust and public television viewers.

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While performing “Before the Summer Ends,” from Dracula, The Musical, the young singer in this video from Broadway or Bust imagines a personal experience that helps him understand and present the emotions of the lyrics. Connecting personal experiences, actual events, or situations you could imagine to the words in a song is one way to build an interpretation. The connection does not need to be completely parallel: as the director notes in the video, a single word in the text may open up a connection to the piece. In this performance, the singer is imagining the emotions that he would experience if his girlfriend asked him to make a difficult promise.

Accessibility Features: Caption

Teaching Tips

Here are suggested ways to engage students with this video and with activities related to this topic.

Select a musical theater song (the song featured in the video or another song) and provide the lyrics (or an excerpt) to the class. Ask students to consider the words and answer these questions: What is the song about? What kind of character is singing the song? What is the focus of the song? (Note that there is not necessarily one correct answer to these questions. Multiple interpretations are often possible.) Then break students into pairs or small groups and ask them to speak the words of the song to each other using different emotions. How does the representation of the text change?
Viewing the video: Use the following suggestions to guide students’ viewing of the video.
- Before viewing: Ask students to consider whether they could connect emotionally to a song they were singing to someone who might be a vampire. (This may elicit some laughs.) Ask them to jot down or mentally make notes of one or two emotions they might focus on.
- After viewing: Discuss with students how the performer in the video connected the emotions to the lyrics. Are there other ways to connect to this idea of making a difficult promise?
Have each student select a song and write a personal memory or imagined experience that could help him or her connect to the words and emotions of the song. Alternately, have students create a “backstory” for the character who is singing the song—a paragraph that explains what has happened that led up to the song and the emotions these events evoke.