The Routledge Companion to the Contemporary Musical

The Routledge Companion to the Contemporary Musical is dedicated to the musical’s evolving relationship to American culture in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. In the past decade-and-a-half, international scholars from an ever-widening number of disciplines and specializations have been actively contributing to the interdisciplinary field of musical theater studies. Musicals have served not only to mirror the sociopolitical, economic, and cultural tenor of the times, but have helped shape and influence it, in America and across the globe: a genre that may seem, at first glance, light-hearted and escapist serves also as a bold commentary on society. Forty-four essays examine the contemporary musical as an ever-shifting product of an ever-changing culture. This volume sheds new light on the American musical as a thriving, contemporary performing arts genre, one that could have died out in the post-Tin Pan Alley era but instead has managed to remain culturally viable and influential, in part by newly embracing a series of complex contradictions. At present, the American musical is a live, localized, old-fashioned genre that has simultaneously developed into an increasingly globalized, tech-savvy, intensely mediated mass entertainment form. Similarly, as it has become increasingly international in its scope and appeal, the stage musical has also become more firmly rooted to Broadway—the idea, if not the place—and thus branded as a quintessentially American entertainment. Contents Acknowledgments Introduction • Jessica Sternfeld and Elizabeth L. Wollman Part 1: Setting the Stage: An Introduction to Analyzing the Musical Theater 1 Musical Theater Reception Theory, or What Happens When You See a Show? • Katie Welsh and Stacy Wolf 2 “[Title of Chapter]” • Millie Taylor Part 2: Starting with the ‘70s 3 They’re Playing My Song: The American Musical in the Me-Decade • Bryan M. Vandevender 4 “My Corner of the Sky”: Adolescence and Coming of Age in the Musicals of Stephen Schwartz • Ryan Bunch 5 Style as Star: Bob Fosse and Sixty Seconds That Changed Broadway • Ryan Donovan 6 Recreating the Ephemeral: Broadway Revivals since 1971 • James Lovensheimer Part 3: Aesthetic Transformations 7 Sing: Musical Theater Voices from Superstar to Hamilton • Ben Macpherson 8 Amplifying Broadway after the Golden Age • Arreanna Rostosky 9 Starlight Expression and Phantom Operatics: Technology, Performance, and the Megamusical’s Aesthetic of the Voice • Dominic Symonds 10 The Sung and the Spoken in Michael John LaChiusa’s Musicals • Alex Bádue 11 The New “Sounds of Broadway”: Orchestrating Electronic Instruments in Contemporary Musicals • Michael M. Kennedy 12 Chart-Toppers to Showstoppers: Pop Artists Scoring the Broadway Stage • Matthew Lockitt 13 Scenographic Aesthetics and Automated Technologies in Broadway Musicals • Christin Essin Part 4: Reading the Musical through Gender 14 Do-Re-#MeToo: Women, Work, and Representation in the Broadway Musical • Mary Jo Lodge 15 It’s Still Working: Collaborating to Perform the Stories of Everyday Americans, Then and Now • Trudi Wright 16 The Pink Elephant in the Room • Aaron C. Thomas 17 “A Little More Mascara”: Drag and the Broadway Musical from La Cage aux Folles to Kinky Boots • John M. Clum Part 5: Reading the Musical through Race and Ethnicity 18 The Multiracial Musical Metropolis: Casting and Race after A Chorus Line • Todd Decker 19 “Before the Parade Passes By”: All-Black and All-Asian Hello, Dolly! as Celebration of Difference • Sissi Liu 20 Race and the City: Racial Formation in Avenue Q • Stefanie A. Jones 21 Can We “Leave Behind the World We Know”?: Exploring Race and Ethnicity in the Musicals of Lin-Manuel Miranda • Elizabeth Titrington Craft 22 Falsettos and Indecent in the Shadow of Fiddler on the Roof: Reconsidering Jewish Identity on Broadway in the New Millennium • Raymond Knapp and Zelda Knapp Part 6: Reading the Musical through Dance 23 What Makes a Musical?: Contact (2000) and Debates about Genre at the Dawn of the Twenty-First Century • Joanna Dee Das 24 Dance in Musical Theater Revival and Adaptation: Engaging with the Past While Creating Dances for the Present • Liza Gennaro 25 The Convergence of Dance Styles in Hamilton: An American Musical • Phoebe Rumsey Part 7: Reading the Musical through Interdisciplinary Lenses 26 Post-Secular Musicals in a Post-Truth World • Jake Johnson 27 Let’s Do the Time Warp Again: Performing Time, Genre, and Spectatorship • Sarah Taylor Ellis 28 The Eye of the Storm: Reading Next to Normal with Psychoanalysis • Aleksei Grinenko 29 Parent/Child Relationships in the Musicals of Stephen Schwartz • Paul R. Laird 30 John Kander: The First Ninety-Two Years • James Leve 31 Unlikely Subjects: The Critical Reception of History Musicals • Elissa Harbert Part 8: Beyond Broadway: New Media and Fan Studies 32 Worshipping Lin-Manuel Miranda: Fans and Totems in the Digital Age • Jessica Hillman-McCord 33 “Trash Talk and Virtual Protests”: The Musical Genre’s Personal and Political Interactivity in the Age of Social Media • Kelly Kessler 34 The Great Generational Divide: Stage-to-Screen Hollywood Musical Adaptations and the Enactment of Fandom • Holley Replogle-Wong 35 Play It Again (and Again, and Again): The Superfan and Musical Theater • James Deaville 36 Joss Whedon and the Geek Musical • Renée Camus 37 “YouTube! Musicals! YouTubesicals!”: Cultivating Theater Fandom through New Media • Aya Esther Hayashi 38 Dual-Focus Strategy in a Serial Narrative: Smash, Nashville, and the Television Musical Series • Robynn Stilwell Part 9: Growth and Expansion: Across the Country and Around the World 39 Sharon McQueen and Milwaukee’s Alternative Regional Musical Theater • Amanda McQueen 40 Musicals in the Regional Theater • Jeffrey Ullom 41 Big River: A New Road to Broadway • Steven Adler 42 The Third Biggest Market: Musical Theater in Germany since 1990 • Frédéric Döhl 43 The Korean Self/American Other: Korean Musical Theater in the Context of National Cultural Development • Hyunjung Lee 44 The Lion King: An International History • Susan Bennett Author Biographies Index __The Routledge Companion to the Contemporary Musical__