For more than fifty years, the Independent (indie) Music Scene has existed as an evolving business model, allowing indie artists to develop a wealth of progressive musical ideas while creating a sustainable audience base. American Musical Theatre has an already-established rich history of adapting styles to fit concurrent trends in popular music while maintaining the story as the core of a show. While some indie artists (The Lisps, The Mountain Goats, Stephin Merritt, and Stew) and some musical theatre composers (David Yazbek, Doug Crossley, and Michael Friedman) have created crossover works, there is currently an overall dearth of musical theatre pieces infused with the indie style and a lack of indie albums with an actable musical theatre storyline. The intent of this thesis is to prove that although American Musical Theatre and the Independent Music Scene are two vastly different art forms, they can be combined to create a viable and unique form that appeals to both audiences. The indie-rock monologue ...and then, Claire was composed, recorded, and performed to test the viability of this thesis. In addition to presenting research on the history of American Musical Theatre and the Independent Music Scene, an analysis of the already-successful artists mentioned above is presented to provide context for ...and then, Claire. This context along with the original indie-rock monologue proves successful combinations of American Musical Theatre and the Independent Music Scene as well as the potential for more attempts in the future.

In the present study, the three principal theories of Russian theorist Mikhail Bakhtin--the carnavalesque, grotesque, and dialogical--are applied to the musical-theatre genre of the Spanish zarzuela. The focus of the study centers on the works of composer Pablo Sorozábal and the various librettists who collaborated with him, among them the renowned literary author Pío Baroja. Within this study, zarzuela is first analyzed on its own in terms of the academic debate surrounding the genre and its importance in terms of both literary and musical criticism. After establishing the particular capacity of the zarzuela to make important cultural contributions, the central theoretical framework of the thesis is established via Bakhtinian theory, and several links are drawn between this theory and the genre of the zarzuela, which is shown to be a body of work often capable of conveying subversive messages, both cultural and sociopolitical. With this critical lens, then, the specific sociopolitical context of Spain between 1931-1942 is analyzed and described in order to illustrate the various extratextual and intertextual elements at play in Sorozábal's zarzuelas. The three works ultimately studied are Katiuska (1931), Adiós a la bohemia (1933), and Black, el payaso (1942). By way of highlighting the Bakhtinian characteristics at play in these three zarzuelas, the composer's intention to challenge and criticize Spain's sociopolitical reality, including Francoist dictatorship, is revealed, illustrating the capacity of the zarzuela to challenge and transgress existing norms--an aspect that many critics have failed to recognize in the genre up to the present day.