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- Volume 13, Issue 3, 2019
Studies in Musical Theatre - Volume 13, Issue 3, 2019
Volume 13, Issue 3, 2019
- Editorial
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- Articles
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‘Something Bad [was] Happening’: Falsettos as an historical record of the AIDS epidemic
More LessThis article argues for the importance of an often-overlooked aspect of Falsettos: the role of Dr Charlotte, a character whose name is never spoken in performance and who is defined by her professional and sexual identities. On the surface, her presence facilitates plot development by introducing discussion of an unknown and fatal illness in the final quarter of the two-act evening. But her identities as a woman, a lesbian and a doctor – and the signification of each – unlock largely unspoken histories, reflecting and transforming broader histories of the AIDS epidemic.
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Whitewashed Usnavi: Race, power and representation in In the Heights
More LessThis article focuses on questions of race, power and representation in regional productions of Lin-Manuel Miranda and Quiara Alegría Hudes’ 2008 Tony Award-winning musical In the Heights. While issues of representation in In the Heights did not begin in 2016, this article uses the Porchlight Music Theatre production as a point of departure to analyse how the musical became a contentious performance text in the post-Hamilton era. This study focuses on how theatre companies that have not traditionally produced Latinx stories have used In the Heights as an entry-point into the Latinx community and as a way to capitalize from the unprecedented success of Miranda’s Hamilton.
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Embodying history: Casting and cultural memory in 1776 and Hamilton
More LessBoth Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton and recent all-female productions of Sherman Edwards and Peter Stone’s 1776 dramatize historical events of the American Revolution with women and people of colour in the roles of white ‘founding fathers’. This article juxtaposes the casting and reception of these history musicals to theorize the ways their non-traditional casting opens up new possibilities for cultural memory of that revered era in US history. Underlying the seemingly progressive embodied performance, the written texts of both 1776 and Hamilton perpetuate founders chic and rehearse traditional versions of the nation’s founding story. Thus they expose but do not subvert the construction of whiteness and masculinity as unmarked categories that have always dominated US culture. The process of upholding the old version while blending it with the new exemplifies the incremental process of cultural memory as it shapes national identity.
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Soft Power: Hwang and Tesori’s reappropriation of The King and I in representing twenty-first-century diplomacy and the dystopic reality of contemporary America
More LessThis article reviews David Henry Hwang and Jeanine Tesori’s Soft Power. In this ‘play with a musical’, Hwang and Tesori revisit Rodgers and Hammerstein’s The King and I to critique its Asian stereotypes. The genre-bending form is, however, much more than a simple retelling of a flawed musical of the past. As the article demonstrates, the writers question China’s attempts at public diplomacy and its efforts to acquire soft power vis a vis its dismal human rights records. The play does so by not merely reversing the narrative of The King and I but by offering a nuanced take on twenty-first-century politics. In doing so, the writers create a scathing portrayal of American reality set against a backdrop of contemporary events.
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Introduction to the ‘Bruce Kirle Panel for Emerging Scholars’ at the Association for Theatre in Higher Education, Orlando, Florida, August 2019
More LessAn introduction to and brief commentary on the three papers presented at the ‘Bruce Kirle Panel for Emerging Scholars’ in August 2019 with emphasis on their consideration of various aspects of politics and social issues and how they deal with the plots and music of the shows they consider within varied theoretical frameworks. The shows addressed by the three authors include London Road, Hamilton and Little Shop of Horrors.
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A Brechtian perspective on London Road: Class representations, dialectics and the ‘gestic’ character of music from stage to screen
More LessThis article uses Brechtian philosophy to assess the role of music and song in the audience reception of the ‘verbatim musical’ London Road. The first section analyses class representations in London Road, with a particular focus on the dialectics and the ‘gestic’ role of the music and song. The second section explores how the adaptation from stage to screen further affects the dialectics of the musical and, paradoxically, serves key Brechtian aims. I focus on two dramaturgical changes in the adaptation from stage to screen: the chronological order of the narrative and the alternation of interview sections and dramatized sections, which resembles the structure of the popular drama-doc genre. Given that reordering and restaging the original verbatim numbers affected audience reception, I analyse the way the meaning is affected through the Brechtian notions of alienation and the gestic character of music. Throughout, I discuss class representations and relevant dialectical implications.
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‘The first black battalion’: Casting in Hamilton
By Anne PotterThis article places the casting practices in Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton in a trajectory of casting practices utilized by Joseph Papp at the New York Shakespeare Festival, and highlights the difficulty of pinpointing which particular casting practice is utilized in Hamilton. It also places the Hamilton casting concept in conversation with August Wilson’s famous arguments about colour-blind casting, and considers how these conversations have changed. It considers the criticisms that have arisen in response to the casting of Hamilton. Finally, the article examines the City Center’s Encores! production of 1776 in 2016, which was produced to be ‘in the style of Hamilton’ but argues that the production of 1776 was not particularly successful at recreating the Hamilton-style casting. In the end, the article questions if there is such a thing as a successful production of 1776 with Hamilton-style casting.
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‘Don’t feed the plants!’: Monstrous normativity and disidentification in Little Shop of Horrors
More LessThe 1982 camp horror musical Little Shop of Horrors tells the story of a meek little flower shop attendant named Seymour, who comes across a novelty carnivorous plant that eats human blood. The talking plant preys on Seymour’s infatuation with his beautiful co-worker Audrey to radicalize him into feeding the plant ‘fresh’ bodies. Building on the work of theatre scholar Michael Chemers, who asserts that stage monsters represent larger social and political anxieties of their time, this article identifies Seymour, the normal, white, heterosexual everyman, as the real ‘monster’ of the musical. Thus, the musical’s creators, Alan Menken and Howard Ashman, exposed the monstrousness of normativity at the poignant moment in American culture, during the early years of the conservative Reagan administration. This article uses José Muñoz’s theory of ‘disidentification’, a strategy employed by marginalized people working ‘on and against dominant ideology’ to analyse the creators’ didactic and subversive strategy.
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Kaspar Holten’s production of Szymanowski’s King Roger: A test of ‘fidelity’
More LessKaspar Holten’s production of Szymanowski’s King Roger (completed in 1924) is an important realization of this complex and challenging opera. It was premiered at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden in 2015; a DVD recording of the London performances makes a detailed study of the production possible. This article is concerned with the issue of what constitutes fidelity in a director’s approach. It begins by discussing Szymanowski’s mise en scène, and outlines the main themes of King Roger and its relationship to Euripides’ Bacchae; then it engages with Holten’s interpretation, and the fascinating designs by Steffen Aarfing, which enable his vision to be realized. The lead characters – Roger and his Queen, Roxana – are both discussed with reference to how Holten illuminates Szymanowski’s drama and its music. His production raises fundamental questions about fidelity and innovation which have dominated critical discussion of many modernist and post-modernist productions not just of opera, but of ‘classics’ of the spoken theatre as well; these questions are posed in particular by Holten’s decision that Roxana should remain with Roger until the end of the opera, in violation of Szymanowski’s scenario.
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The mental health of musical theatre students in tertiary education: A pilot study
More LessThis article seeks to illuminate questions of mental health in tertiary-level musical theatre training. Professional performing artists, students of singing, dance and acting, as well as undergraduate university students are all at greater risk of mental health problems than the general population. At the nexus of these domains is the tertiary-level musical theatre student. Through a survey conducted with recent musical theatre graduates in Australia, this study investigated the impact of tertiary-level musical theatre study on the psychological wellbeing of its students, identifying relevant stressors and mitigating factors. The results demonstrate a higher instance of mental health concerns in this cohort than the general population and other tertiary-level groups. Some solutions to mitigate the issue are presented.
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- Performance Review
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Fiddler Afn Dakh (Fiddler on the Roof ), music by Jerry Bock, lyrics by Sheldon Harnick, book by Joseph Stein, Yiddish translation by Shraga Friedman, directed by Joel Grey
More LessReview of: Fiddler Afn Dakh (Fiddler on the Roof), music by Jerry Bock, lyrics by Sheldon Harnick, book by Joseph Stein, Yiddish translation by Shraga Friedman, directed by Joel Grey
Stage 42, New York, 21 March 2019
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- Book Reviews
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Volumes & issues
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Volume 18 (2024)
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Volume 17 (2023)
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Volume 16 (2022)
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Volume 15 (2021)
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Volume 14 (2020)
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Volume 13 (2019)
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Volume 12 (2018)
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Volume 11 (2017)
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Volume 10 (2016)
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Volume 9 (2015)
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Volume 8 (2014)
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Volume 7 (2013)
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Volume 6 (2012)
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Volume 5 (2011 - 2012)
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Volume 4 (2010)
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Volume 3 (2009)
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Volume 2 (2008)
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Volume 1 (2006 - 2007)
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