Children, Childhood, and Musical Theater

Donelle Ruwe, James Leve, Donelle Ruwe, James Leve

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN:
  9781032400525
• eBook ISBN:
  9781317167730
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

Bringing together scholars from musicology, literature, childhood studies, and theater, this volume examines the ways in which children's musicals tap into adult nostalgia for childhood while appealing to the needs and consumer potential of the child. The contributors take up a wide range of musicals, including works inspired by the books of children's authors such as Roald Dahl, P.L. Travers, and Francis Hodgson Burnett; created by Rodgers and Hammerstein, Lionel Bart, and other leading lights of musical theater; or conceived for a cast made up entirely of children. The collection examines musicals that propagate or complicate normative attitudes regarding what childhood is or should be. It also considers the child performer in movie musicals as well as in professional and amateur stage musicals. This far-ranging collection highlights the special place that musical theater occupies in the imaginations and lives of children as well as adults. The collection comes at a time of increased importance of musical theater in the lives of children and young adults.

1 Children, childhood, and musical theater

An introduction

James Leve and Donelle Ruwe

The impetus behind this collection is the recognition that musical theater plays an important part in young people’s lives. Paying attention to how children experience musical theater opens up new understandings of musical theater and children’s culture. The intersection of childhood cultural studies and musical theater studies is a new, albeit growing, area of research. Musical theater studies, itself a relatively young field, has produced historical accounts told through the lens of feminism, social history, African American studies, and even religion, but no sustained study that privileges the child has appeared, despite the abundance of musicals for children and musicals about them.¹

The reasons for the scholarly neglect are historical and cultural. Historically, both children’s literature and musical theater have been viewed as inferior artistic genres. Gender bias lies behind much of the prejudice, for children’s literature and musical theater are both associated with the feminine. As Stacy Wolf, a contributor to this collection, has written, “musical theatre has always been the terrain of women and girls,” and the tastes of women, girls, and children have historically been devalued.² Implicit in this bias is the belief that children are incapable of distinguishing good art from bad art. Further, musicals written primarily for children to perform are considered an inferior category of musical theater, seen as childish, local, ephemeral, amateurish, and artistically suspect. Children’s participation in musical theater would seem more appropriate for sociological or educational studies than aesthetic and artistic analysis.³ However, the educational scholarship about the impact of musical theater on children tends to be anecdotal and offers little measurable data to justify the inclusion of musical theater in the school curriculum beyond the obvious general benefits typically ascribed to arts education.⁴ To paraphrase Peter Hunt’s discussion of children’s literature, if “children” commonly connotes immaturity, and “musical theater” commonly connotes something light and frivolous, as it did for most of its history, then it is no wonder that children’s musical theater has been neglected.⁵

Children’s engagement with musical theater has evolved and increased along with new technologies. Children once enjoyed playing their favorite musicals on records, then CDs, and now MP3 players or the latest digital format. Children today have a fluid experience with musical theater, one with greater access and agency. Children around the world experience musicals through sound clips, show-tune mashups, parodies, school and community performances, and doting parents’ uploaded videos of a child’s talent-show rendition of Frozen’s “Do You Want to Build a Snowman?” When the fictional protagonist of Netflix’s Haters Back Off (2016–17), the clueless and talentless Miranda Sings (Coleen Ballinger), posts a YouTube recording of herself singing “Defying Gravity” from Wicked, she is exercising her right as an American kid with a computer to be a musical theater star of her own making. Such moments of hypermediation typify a child’s experiences with musical theater today. Children create their own musical theater forms through processes as varied as fanfiction postings to claymation spoofs on Facebook’s Vine Camera.⁶ Jay David Bolter and Richard Grusin note that hypermediacy “privileges fragmentation, indeterminacy, and heterogeneity,” and it emphasizes process over performance.⁷ For example, the poster in Figure 1.1 of a child’s felt-tipped, coloring marker drawing titled “Jamilton” epitomizes children’s musical theater hypermediation as well as a transgressive crossing of disciplines.

Figure 1.1 Jamilton, a Magic-marker pointillism posterby nine-year-old James Quincy Leve. Permission of editors.

At the time the poster was created, the artist, James Quincy, was nine-years-old and a fan of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton. When he was given an assignment to create a magic-marker pointillism poster for a 4th-grade art class, James Quincy chose to reimagine the poster and Playbill cover of the musical. The iconic image of Alexander Hamilton with a raised gun atop a golden star intersects with James Quincy’s fantasy world “Jamestopia.” He renames the musical Jamilton, the producer credit reads “a JAMESTOPIA MUSICAL,” the gun is replaced with a “J” flag, and the marquee reads “SJAMES.” In the bottom left corner, a seemingly random image appears (inspired by an internet meme) of a man crying with the word “WHY!!” within a dialogue bubble. Pointillism, Playbill, theater elements (the marquee), and internet memes are remediated, appearing in a single vibrant image.

Our essay collection analyzes musicals as literary works as well as performance texts and sites of social practice. The ten contributors explore Broadway musicals and movie musicals that feature professional child actors as well as musicals written for children to perform in non-commercial (i.e., amateur theater) venues. We look at musical adaptations of children’s books. We also consider musical theater in the context of young adult audiences and performers. Musicals embraced by children, whether they qualify as “children’s musicals,” figure large in this volume, but they are only one facet of our discussion. We are equally concerned with what the discursive practice of musical theater has to say about childhood and the child. The range of essays in this book, therefore, reflects the complexity of the topic and the intrinsic interdisciplinary nature of children’s studies and musical theater studies. The contributors examine real children as performers and as audience members, as well as idealized children as they are constructed in musical theater texts and productions. The collection recognizes that “doing” musical theater (writing musicals, performing in them, going to them, purchasing recordings of them, and blogging about them) is part of the cultural work of constructing childhood.

The term “children’s musical” lacks a formal, universally accepted definition. Is it a musical written for children to watch, or is it a musical written for children to perform? Do musicals with only one or two parts for children, or those featuring children in leading roles such as Billy Elliot the Musical (2005) and Matilda the Musical (2010), count if those musicals are primarily directed to adult audiences? The term “children’s musical” appears in no index of a major musical theater history book, and there is little musicological research on children’s musical theater as of yet. Commercial producers avoid the term “children’s musicals” at all cost, lest they scare away adults, the primary ticket buyers. If by “children’s musical” one means something intended exclusively for children, then children’s musical theater is essentially an amateur phenomenon. However, commercial Broadway musicals are now available in simplified child performance versions. Moreover, parents take their children to the full range of commercial musicals and not just those explicitly marketed to children.

One of our first tasks, then, is to clarify what scholars mean by “children’s musicals.” This deceptively simple term leads quickly to contested terms, beginning with the complicated and unanswerable question of “what is a child?” For the purposes of this collection, we identify three broad, overlapping categories of children’s musical theater: the children’s musical, family musical, and young adult musical. The children’s musical, we argue, exists primarily in the world of amateur, non-commercial theater. It is written for children (pre-school and elementary school age) to perform or to be performed for them. The children’s musical includes both children’s theater (plays presented for child audiences) and “creative dramatics” or “recreational drama” (theater performed by children with the goal of experiential learning and child development).⁸ By contrast, the family musical is a commercial genre that appeals to both children and adults. The family musical is associated with the Rodgers and Hammerstein model and strongly appeals to the middle class. The family musical is such a core part of the canon that it is essentially synonymous with “mainstream musical.” Since children lack the means to attend Broadway theater on their own, most Broadway musicals considered “children’s musicals” are in fact family musicals. Family movie musicals such as State Fair (1945, 1962), The Music Man (1962), Mary Poppins (1964), The Sound of Music (1965), Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (1968), and Bedknobs and Broomsticks (1971) reached a massive audience that crossed generational lines. These musicals celebrate the heteronormative family and often affirm the father’s centrality within the family. As children’s literature scholar Ian Wojcik-Andrews notes, “most ‘children’s’ films are actually family films.”⁹ The young adult musical is one of the fastest growing segments of the musical theater industry. It is highly commercial (unlike the children’s musical), but unlike similarly commercial family musicals, young adult musicals speak to the sexual and social concerns of teens and young adults. While “young adult literature” is a thriving category of literary analysis, there is no musical theater equivalent as of yet, even though in practice the “young adult musical” is a very profita...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• List of illustrations
• List of contributors
• 1 Children, childhood, and musical theater: an introduction
• 2 Beginning with Do Re Mi: childhood and The Sound of Music
• 3 Walt Disney, Dr. Benjamin Spock, and the Gospel of ideal childrearing: creating superlative nuclear families in Mary Poppins, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, and Bedknobs and Broomsticks
• 4 Saving Mr. [Blank]: rescuing the father through song in children’s and family musicals
• 5 Dickensian discourses: giving a (singing) voice to the child hero in Oliver! and Copperfield
• 6 Ghetto chic: utopianism and the authentic child in The Me Nobody Knows (1970)
• 7 Little girls, big voices: Annie
• 8 Urchins, unite: Newsies as an antidote to Annie
• 9 Agency, power, and the inner child: the “Revolting Children” of Matilda the Musical
• 10 Children’s musicals for educational and community settings
• 11 Broadway Junior
• Bibliography of scholarly sources
• Index