Gender, sex and sexuality in musical theatre : he/she/they could have danced all night / edited and curated by Kelly Kessler.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Kessler, Kelly, 1972- editor, curator.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Musicals--History and criticism.

Musicals.

Sex in the theater.

Sex role in the theater.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xvii, 323 pages) : illustrations.

Place of Publication:

Bristol, England : Intellect Ltd, 2023.

Biography/History:

Kelly Kessler is professor of media and cinema studies in the College of Communication at DePaul University in Chicago. She has published widely on television, film, and musical theater, including her recent book Broadway in the Box: Television's Lasting Love Affair with the Musical.

Summary:

"Critics and fans alike often mistake theatrical song and dance as simplistic, heteronormative, and traditional. This collection troubles this over-idealized notion of musical theatre, tackling divas, chorus boys, and the Rockettes; hit shows such as Hamilton and Spring Awakening; and lesser-known but groundbreaking gems like Erin Markey's A Ride on The Irish Cream and Kirsten Childs's Bella: An American Tall Tale. The book takes a broad look at musical theater across a range of intersecting lenses including race, nation, form, dance, casting, marketing, pedagogy, industry, stardom, politics, and platform. Undermining the musical form's conservative façade, scholars drive home the fact that gender and desire have long been at the heart of the musical. This exciting and vibrant collection of articles takes sex, sexuality, gendered complexity out of the musical's liner notes and back above the marquee."-- Provided by publisher

Contents:

Introduction: Belting away at binaries / Kelly Kessler

Part 1 : Exploring and exploding the gender binary on the musical stage. The Radio City Rockettes and the making of a sisterhood / Adrienne Gibbons Oehlers

Billy Elliot the musical : visual representations of working-class masculinity and the all-singing, all-dancing bo[d]y / George Rodosthenous

Hamilton's women / Stacy Wolf

Rewriting the American West : Black feminist (re)vision in Bella: an American tall tale / Jordan Ealey

A-list drag queens, accidental drag kings, and illegible gender rebels : (mis)representations of trans experience in contemporary musicals / Janet Werther

Part 2: Embodying and exploiting sex and sexuality on and off Broadway. Chorus boys : words, music and queerness (c. 1900-36) / David Haldane Lawrence

Emancipation or exploitation? : gender liberation and adult musicals in 1970s New York / Elizabeth L. Wollman

A substitute for love : the performance of sex in Spring awakening / Bryan M. Vandevender

If you were gay, that'd be okay : marketing LGBTQ+ musicals from La cage to The prom / Ryan Donovan

Part 3: Divas don't care about nobody's rules. Embracing excess : the queer feminist power of musical theatre diva roles / Michelle Dvoskin

Stepping out of line : (re)claiming the diva for the dancers of Broadway / Dustyn Martincich

Diva relations in The color purple, the 2015 Broadway revival / Deborah Paredez

How can the small screen contain her? : television, genre and the twenty-first-century Broadway diva onslaught / Kelly Kessler

Part 4: Onstage, offstage, and online : gender and sexuality in personal and professional musical practice. The queerness of Copla : musical hope for the Spanish LGBTQ / Alejandro Postigo

Queering Brechtian feminism : breaking down gender binaries in musical theatre pedagogical performance practices / Sherrill Gow

For progress or profit : the possibilities and limitations of playing with gender in twenty-first-century musical theatre / Stephanie Lim

The right to see and not be seen : South Korean musicals and young feminist activism / Jiyoon Jung.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references.

Description based on print version record and online resource.

Other Format:

Print version:

ISBN:

9781789386202

1789386209

9781789386219

1789386217