Just another Puerto Rican with a knife? Racism and reception on the Great White Way

In the January/February 1998 issue of Hispanic magazine, Robert Dominguez called the upcoming musical The Capeman a historic event, predicting that it would precipitate more Latino-themed Broadway productions (Dominguez 1998: 84). His prediction has proven inaccurate. Musicals such as In the Heights notwithstanding, this group has continued to be under-represented or misrepresented on and behind the Broadway stage. This essay explores the roles (or lack of) Latinos have played on and off the Broadway stage and contextualizes their presence/absence within larger issues of reception and race in musical theatre, leading to new hypotheses regarding the failure of The Capeman and pointing towards new directions for the future of Latino/a musical theatre.