Musical Theatre Histories

Expanding the Narrative

Millie Taylor, Adam Rush

• Publisher: Methuen Drama
• Year: 2022
• Print ISBN: 9781350293755
• eBook ISBN: 9781350293779
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Theatre History & Criticism

Musical theatre is often perceived as either a Broadway based art form, or as having separate histories in London and New York. Musical Theatre Histories: Expanding the Narrative, however, depicts the musical as neither American nor British, but both and more, having grown out of frequent and substantial interactions between both centres (and beyond). Through multiple thematic 'histories', Millie Taylor and Adam Rush take readers on a series of journeys that include the art form's European and American origins, African American influences, negotiations arounddiversity, national identity, and the globalisation of the form, as well as revival culture, censorship and the place of social media in
the 21st century.

Each chapter includes case studies and key concept boxes to identify, explain and contextualise important discussions, offering an accessible study of a dynamic and ever evolving medium.
Written and developed for undergraduate students, this introductory textbook provides a newly focused and alternative way of understanding musical theatre history.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Halftitle Page
• Title Page
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Acknowledgements
• ‘Why we tell the story’: Introduction
• 1 ‘Putting it together’: From operetta to poperetta
• 2 ‘We are the rhythms that color your song’: From ragtime to rap
• 3 ‘Waving through a window’: From intertext to Instagram
• 4 ‘Easy to be hard’: From censorship to sex
• 5 ‘Stand up’: From gender duality to diversity
• 6 ‘Another national anthem’: From ourselves to the other
• 7 ‘The world was wide enough’: From colonial to corporate culture
• 8 ‘Journey to the past’: From revival to revisal
• Bibliography
• Index
• Imprint