Megamusicals, spectacle and the postdramatic aesthetics of late capitalism

One of the most controversial aspects of the megamusical is the stage spectacle it offers. The aim of this article is to define this spectacle as an aesthetic category and analyse the reasons for its vast popularity in postmodern culture. A cultural reading of the megamusical’s staging vocabulary will show that the genre’s prodigious emphasis on the visual aspects of the performance is an integral part of a postmodern masscultural aesthetic that emphasizes aesthetic form instead of narrative content. This aesthetic, which has its roots in modernist and avant-garde practices, can be defined as ‘postdramatic’ and its commodification in postmodern culture is closely related to the late-capitalist reorganization of social life in spectacular terms. Moreover, cultural critics, from Walter Benjamin to Gut Debord and Fredric Jameson, have shown that this spectacularization of social life has a century-long history and intensifies over the years. Based on this theorization of spectacular transformation as an ongoing socio-economic process, this article will also trace the history of the megamusical’s postdramatic spectacle. It will show how capitalism, throughout the twentieth century, cultivated new modes of perception that made possible the introduction on the musical stage of new methods of postdramatic organization, which affected Broadway’s aesthetic production from the book musical, dance musical and concept musical to the megamusical.