Full text loading...
-
The performance of discipline on Broadway
- Source: Studies in Musical Theatre, Volume 1, Issue 1, Dec 2006, p. 97 - 108
-
- 12 Dec 2006
Abstract
Jean Baudrillard's theory of simulacra helps explain Broadway's concentration on revivals, musical revues, and movie adaptations. The theory also offers a lens through which corporate America can be observed as manufacturing simulated liveness. These simulations are labeled live theatre, they open on Broadway and tour across the country, but are they live or simulations of liveness? If corporate producers on Broadway are mass producing a corporate perception of liveness, what is this perception, and how does it affect the material condition of actors within a corporate theatre product? Something has happened to actors on Broadway, and this something is being mass marketed and mass produced for the United States and the world.