The Routledge Companion to Musical Theatre

Description

Global in scope and featuring thirty-five chapters from more than fifty dance, music, and theatre scholars and practitioners, The Routledge Companion to Musical Theatre introduces the fundamentals of musical theatre studies and highlights developing global trends in practice and scholarship. Investigating the who, what, when, where, why, and how of transnational musical theatre,The Routledge Companion to Musical Theatre is a comprehensive guide for those studying the components of musical theatre, its history, practitioners, audiences, and agendas. The Companion expands the study of musical theatre to include the ways we practice and experience musicals, their engagement with technology, and their navigation of international commercial marketplaces. The Companion is the first collection to include global musical theatre in each chapter, reflecting the musical’s status as the world’s most popular theatrical form. This bookbrings together practice and scholarship, featuring essays by leading and emerging scholars alongside luminaries such as Chinese musical theatre composer San Bao, Tony Award-winning star André De Shields, and Tony Award-winning director Diane Paulus. This is an essential resource for students on theatre and performance courses and an invaluable text for researchers and practitioners in these areas of study. Cover Half Title Series Title Copyright Contents List of contributors Foreword Introduction Part I What Introduction: On Musicals 1 Musical Theatre Mobilities: Around the World in Eighty Years 2 An American in Tokyo? Musical Theatre Dance’s Transnational Movements 3 “How a World Can Seem So Vast”: The Craft of Musical Theatre Dramaturgy 4 The Singing Voice 5 “The Song Is You”: Song Types and Genres in Musical Theatre Part II When Introduction: Dark Primal Energy, Ancestor Memory, and American Exceptionalism 6 From Ballad Opera to Minstrelsy and Back: Social Class, Race, and Gender on the North American Musical Stage 7 From the 1870s Through World War I: The Spectre and Spectacle of the Human Body 8 Boom to Bust: Genre Borders, Color Lines, and Women Stars in the Musical Between the World Wars 9 World War II and the Cold War: Reflections and Refractions of Ourselves, Then and Now 10 Since the 1980s: The Global Musical Theatre Ecology Part III Who Introduction: Who Makes a Musical? 11 Musical Theatre Training in the Twenty-First Century: A Primer 12 “Forget About the Boy”: Women and Creative Collaborations in Musical Theatre 13 Good Gals Wear Black: Offstage Labor and the Musical 14 Mediated Taste: The Role of Critics 15 From Stage Door to Cyberspace: The Digital Evolution of Musical Theatre Fandom Part IV How Introduction: How Musicals Work: A Press Representative’s View 16 Fitting the Slipper: The Art of Adaptation for the Musical Stage 17 Harnessing Technology: The Evolving Labor of Design in Musical Theatre 18 Humming the Scenery: The Aesthetics of Musical Theatre Spectacle 19 “That’s Showbiz, Kid”: Casting as Process and Product 20 The Foundation, Function, and Future of the Musical Theatre Director 21 How Choreographers and Dancers Work: The Laboring Bodies of Musical Theatre 22 “The Name on Everybody’s Lips”: Marketing Musical Theatre 23 A Critical Guide to Code-Meshing, Multilingualism, and Musicals Part V Where Introduction: Scenes From a Showbiz Couple’s Travelogue 24 Centers of Musical Theatre 25 Pilots and Petticoats: Original Musicals in Continental Europe 26 The Broadway-Style Musical in/and Global Asias: 1920–2019 27 “One of the Best Ways to Please the Locals Is to Go to New York”: US American Regional Theatres and New Musical Theatre Development 28 “We’re All in This Together”: Student and Amateur Musical Theatre Performances 29 Mediated Musical Theatre Part VI Why Introduction: Into the Theatre 30 Journeys to the Past: The Uses of Memory and Nostalgia in Musical Theatre 31 What’s in a Name? The Multiplicities of the Musical 32 Interrogating America’s National Myth Onstage: Case Studies on the Individual and the Community in US Musical Theatre 33 Translating Race in Musical Theatre 34 Art Isn’t Easy (and Neither Is Commerce): The Musical Stays in the Money 35 “World”-Traveling, Diversity, Inclusion, and the Making of Musicals in the Twenty-First Century Appendix: Towards a Taxonomy of Music Theatre Genres, A-Z Index