Urinetown Dramaturgy

“Don’t you think people want to be told that their way of life is unsustainable?”

-Officer Lockstock, Urinetown: The Musical

Throughout history, artists have used comedy—specifically satire and parody—to expose the inequalities within society. Urinetown: the musical follows in this tradition, using satire and parody to challenge the faith we place in institutions.

Satire can be seen in media, literature, and performance in three primary styles. The first is Horatian satire, which uses light social commentary to raise awareness in an entertaining way. The second style is Juvenalian. In contrast, this style is more abrasive in its critical tone. The last style is Menippean, which combines bitterness and humor to point out social ills. Many musicals employ this Menippean style, a tactic that particularly flourished during the Great Depression era as a mechanism for coping with the struggles of daily life. The theatre industry found that comedy was an excellent way to communicate the faults within society in a way that was both palatable and informative. Urinetown follows in that tradition by using satire to interrogate police brutality, environmentalism, and abuse of power. It does so through quick witted dialogue and direct confrontation with the audience. Lines such as “Police protect the peace… Do they?” suggest corruption within our institutions and how it can perpetuate inequities within society.

Urinetown also employs parody with its dramatic structure, music, and choreography all poking fun at well-known musicals. Parody in theatre is not simply about imitation, but also about contrasting old language and characters with the new to create humor. Parody uses an array of strategies. Exaggeration takes the original piece and pushes it to its limits. Trivialization involves treating serious subject matters as if they were insignificant or foolish. Inversion involves flipping the good to the bad, the normal to the strange, or the unexpected to the expected. This tactic produces some of the more controversial work. Urinetown employs all of these strategies—exaggerating the structure of musicals such as Les Misérables, Fiddler on the Roof, and Carousel; inverting the strange to the normal; and trivializing serious subject matter for the sake of astute social commentary.

Satire and parody have been especially valuable to theatre artists by giving them cover as they boldly speak truth to power. This is the cultural work of Urinetown. Through song and dance it invites audiences into a dystopian work that reveals brutal truths concerning the sustainability of resources, corporate corruption and how power operates in society. As Bertolt Brecht, a theatre artist famous for both satire and parody asserted: “Art is not a mirror held up to reality but a hammer with which to shape it.”

-Joey Schulman, Dramaturg

 

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