The Routledge Companion to the Contemporary Musical

Jessica Sternfeld, Elizabeth L. Wollman, Jessica Sternfeld, Elizabeth L. Wollman

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781134851850
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Medien & darstellende Kunst
• Subtopic: Musik

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.

PART 1

Setting the Stage

An Introduction to Analyzing the Musical Theater

What happens when you go to see a musical? Yes, sure, at least on the surface, it’s pretty obvious: you sit in a seat and watch a bunch of people sing and dance for you, and then you leave the theater when the show ends. But what really happens? What about the thousands upon thousands of small, seemingly obvious actions—cultural rituals, all of them—that one enacts when attending a live performance? What do they all mean, and how do they all work together to create a collective experience? Similarly, what happens when you want to write about a musical? Again, sure, you record your impressions for others to read—but what else is there to it? Both seeing a show and writing about it may seem very straightforward, but they’re a lot more complex and detailed than they first appear. In what we think is the perfect starting point for this collection, we present a small section with only two essays, both of which analyze in detail actions that initially seem simple and mundane enough not to think too deeply about: viewing and writing about the musical theater.

Katie Welsh and Stacy Wolf’s essay takes as its subject for analysis the very act of attending a theatrical production. Theatergoing is a joyful activity, of course, but as Welsh and Wolf remind us, that doesn’t mean it’s not also loaded with meaning. They draw from reception theory, sociology, and anthropology to analyze the many working parts that combine into the experience of seeing a live production. Their lively, descriptive essay makes clear that the seemingly passive act of being a spectator at a theater is in fact enormously complex and detailed. Appropriately enough, their essay itself seems simple and straightforward–but it, too, is much more complex than it initially seems.

Millie Taylor’s essay, which focuses on and plays off the title of the 2006 Off-Broadway musical [title of show], is similar in this respect: the essay is friendly, welcoming, and straightforward, but Taylor uses [title of show] as a springboard to introduce readers to several central concepts of postmodernism as they relate to the musical theater in general. In doing so, Taylor describes seemingly mundane actions—reflecting back on a beloved musical, pondering a topic about which to write, sitting down at the keyboard to organize the essay, and so on—that turn out to be far more complex and detailed than they initially might seem. This makes sense, really, and these two essays serve as fitting examples for the rest of this volume: there are as many ways of looking at and writing about musicals as there are musicals themselves.

1

MUSICAL THEATER RECEPTION THEORY, OR WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU SEE A SHOW?

Katie Welsh and Stacy Wolf

What is a musical? Is it the script from which the actors learn their lines? Is it the music, notated as an orchestrated score or recorded as a cast album? Is it the production, with the theatrical elements of set, lights, and costumes, plus performers and musicians? Or is it the performance’s interaction with the audience, which varies each night? Yes, and much more: a musical encompasses the spectator’s entire experience with a show, from their first acquaintance until it fades from memory. This is a reception theory approach to musical theater.

Within that broad framework, we can examine a more circumscribed chunk of the experience, what Performance Studies scholar Richard Schechner calls “the whole performance sequence.”¹ In Schechner’s schema, a limited number of people undertake a series of actions in a concentrated area during a scheduled period of time. In this chapter, we walk you through the audience’s performance sequence at a contemporary Broadway musical in New York City.² We rely on Schechner’s phases of Training, Warm-Up, Performance, Cool-Down, and Aftermath, and add one of our own: Intermission.³

Rather than focus on the “performance” as it is traditionally understood in musical theater—the singing, dancing, and acting that happens between the first and last chords of the show—we examine everything that takes place around it. We’ve organized this experience by way of 11 junctures. At each one, the audience crosses a physical, mental, or emotional threshold and moves from one physical, mental, or emotional state to another. In the end, we hope to answer this question: what really happens when you see a show?

Before the Day of the Show: Training, or Assembling Your Horizon of Expectations

Your spectatorial experience begins before you enter the theater, before you purchase a ticket, before you even know the show is happening. Once you learn of a musical’s existence, your decision to see it is dictated by a lifetime of acquired knowledge. You might know, for example, the musical’s title, the story or topic it explores, the production’s cast and creative team, or critics’ or audience reviews. You might have familiarity with other Broadway shows, other music genres, other performance forms like dance or nonmusical theater, or visual arts, literature, radio, film, television, or other media. Your experience is also shaped by your identity: your gender, race, ethnicity, sexuality, class, region, culture, politics, religion, age, education, health, family, friends, and other factors that inform who you are. Together, these influences and experiences make up your “horizon of expectations,” a term coined by Hans Robert Jauss in Toward an Aesthetic of Reception (1982). Jauss argues that a text (in this case, a musical) is not “a monument that monologically reveals its timeless essence,” but is “like an orchestration that strikes ever new resonances among its readers.”⁴ In other words, a text’s meaning is fluid, not fixed, because everyone approaches it from a unique perspective.

Theater scholars Marvin Carlson and Susan Bennett consider Jauss’ theories about the reader-text relationship in their analyses of the audience-show relationship. Carlson argues that the audience “brings to the theater…expectations, assumptions, and strategies which will creatively interact with the stimuli,” and Bennett agrees that the audience’s horizons of expectation “are bound to interact with every aspect of the theatrical event.”⁵ Musical theater reception is an active process, a negotiation between what the show is doing and what you expect it to do.

Producers and creative teams behind Broadway musicals use their understanding of these expectations to market the show.⁶ A Bronx Tale (2017), for example, was advertised as “a mix of Jersey Boys and West Side Story” to capitalize on the reputation of the two popular titles. Broadway producers and marketers try to strike a balance between meeting expectations (comfort, familiarity) and disrupting them (risk, uncertainty). Many productions, especially revivals, promise to present something audiences know but with a twist, thus blending the familiar with the new. For example, the poster for the Deaf West revival of Spring Awakening (2015), which featured Deaf performers in the lead roles, read, “The Tony Award-Winning Musical Returns in a New Production Unlike Anything You’ve Ever Seen Heard Imagined,” overtly marking how the new concept revised what audiences already knew about the show.

Audiences not only have access to the show’s officially sanctioned marketing materials but also to independent reviews. The New York Times remains the paper of record and arbiter of taste in the world of Broadway. In fact, before the 1980s, its reviews used to make or break a show. But with the incursion of British-based megamusicals to Broadway, audiences ignored first-string reviewer Frank Rich’s opinions and began flocking to Cats and The Phantom of the Opera, which journalists like him had panned. Audience independence has persisted and even expanded since the late 1990s, when we all gained access to regular spectators’—that is, each other’s—opinions on blogs, chat rooms, and social media.

Public access to production excerpts has also increased over time. Since the mid-twentieth century, audiences have been able to see Broadway stars perform on talk shows, news programs, and PBS specials, and these preview segments have served to entice potential ticket buyers. As of the mid-2000s, one can view extensive performance footage on YouTube. Over the years, more opportunities have become available for audiences to judge a show for themselves before they have even bought a ticket.

All of these influences comprise the audience’s off-site “training” and become part of their horizon of expectations going into the show. Going forward, think of us as your tour guides. You won’t necessarily experience everything we mention in one trip, but we’ll highlight the many things you can see, hear, smell, taste, and do at a Broadway musical.

Day of the Show: Warm-Up, the Preshow Sidewalk

We begin 45 minutes before curtain, in what Schechner calls the “Warm-Up” stage. By this point, you have traveled by car, plane, train, bus, taxi, bicycle, or foot to New York City’s theater district, and traversed Times Square to arrive on the street where your Broadway musical lives—likely somewhere between 43rd and 50th streets.⁷ You’ll spot the large sign bearing the name of the show and the theater, and maybe the name of the star. As you proceed toward it, your attention zooms in on the show, and your sense of a larger New York City fades.⁸ Your first juncture is this shift in focus from big city to narrow sidewalk outside the theater.

When you arrive, you first encounter the building’s façade, which is typically covered in critics’ quotes, award announcements, and production photos. For example, in 1976, A Chorus Line was “Dynamite!” and in 1998, Ragtime boasted “State-of-the-Art Theater Craftsmanship.” Spamalot (2005) was “A Musical of the Highest Excaliber!” The Book of Mormon (2011) is “The Best Musical of This Century!” You may read these statements and get even more excited about the show. Or maybe you usually disagree with the critics and the Tony Awards committee, so nothing here impresses you. The words and images on the façade might confirm what brought you to the theater in the first place, or they might surprise you: Wow, I knew Chita Rivera would display her dancing prowess in Chicago (1975)—look at that picture of her striking a pose! Oh, that picture doesn’t even look like Donna Murphy; she really transformed herself to play Fosca (Passion 1994).

Occasionally, shows opt for three-dimensional décor on the façade, which immerses audiences in the world of the show before they enter the building. During Into the Woods (1987), a 75-foot inflatable leg, its foot fitted in a boot, dangled from the roof of the Martin Beck Theatre, which “created the illusion that a giant had crashed through the top of the theater.”⁹ In preparation for Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2017), the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre façade was redesigned to look l...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Part 1 Setting the Stage: An Introduction to Analyzing the Musical Theater
• Part 2 Starting with the ‘70s
• Part 3 Aesthetic Transformations
• Part 4 Reading the Musical through Gender
• Part 5 Reading the Musical through Race and Ethnicity
• Part 6 Reading the Musical through Dance
• Part 7 Reading the Musical through Interdisciplinary Lenses
• Part 8 Beyond Broadway: New Media and Fan Studies
• Part 9 Growth and Expansion: Across the Country and Around the World
• Author Biographies
• Index