The wonderful world of entertainment continues to cross pollinate. Ideas and stories flow freely from one form to another, from the printed word to stage or the screen, from a stage to television, from any place where an audience can be found to another. This almost incestuous process has its critics, but it cannot be denied. Recently one of the rarest paths of this creative transference has been announced.

The world of Don Draper may be coming to the stage as musical theater. Mad Men already experimented with this on October with a benefit musical revue at the El Rey Theater in Los Angeles. The word, according to Playbill, is that Liongate is trying to book dates for this compilation of songs that creator and executive producer Matthew Weiner has chosen for the show.

Actors and actresses from the show, a cast that includes veteran Broadway men Bryant Batt and Robert Morse, would perform the songs, which are often taken from the Kennedy era in which the show is set. Dubbed “A Night on the Town with ‘Mad Men,’” the show would be one of the few to make the transition from television to the stage.

This is not counting the Sesame Street, Wiggles, and Blues Clues shows that force parents to spend hundreds of dollars to see their kids’ favorite educational shows in person. Most of the time, stage shows move from the written word to a live production to a filmed version.

Wicked is an example of this. It moved from the Gregory Maguire novel to the stage (and there is a movie rumored in the works to complete the journey). People purchasing South Pacific tickets are watching Rodgers and Hammerstein’s adaptation of James A. Michener’s Tales of the South Pacific.

This paradigm runs true for most plays and musicals. A few, like Hairspray and Billy Elliot, run as a counter to that tradition. Those productions were taken from movies though. The realm of television, in part to its eternal struggle to provide quality entertainment while drawing a broad audience, has a harder time.

The shows have a difficult time shedding the established thought that television is the new low-brow end of entertainment, which is ironic considering that theater once held that mantle a few hundred years ago. Mad Men is a different situation though.

This production, which is apparently in the very early stages of formative conjecture, is only a musical revue and not a full-blown adaptation. Also, Mad Men is held in high esteem for its tempered story telling that lets the brewing conflicts simmer beneath the surface. This respect so many have for the show is such excess that Mad Men transcends that thought. The show almost carries weight simply because of its title, regardless of the names associated and the songs associated with the revue.

While some might go as far as to say that the paradigm is being blurred even more by this Emmy winning show, it will take much more than the acceptance of a show like Mad Men to make the lines of entertainment completely open. I would wait to pass that kind of judgment until after the success or failure of the rumored Ugly Betty musical adaptation.