Seriously mad : mental distress and the Broadway musical / Aleksei Grinenko.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Grinenko, Aleksei, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Musicals--New York (State)--New York--History and criticism.

Musicals.

Mental illness in music.

Mental illness--Drama--History and criticism.

Mental illness.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (283 pages)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Ann Arbor, Michigan : University of Michigan Press, 2023.

Summary:

Theatermakers in the United States have long been drawn to madness as a source of dramatic spectacle. During the Broadway musical's "golden age," creative teams used the currently in-vogue psychoanalytic ideas about mental life to construct troubled characters at odds with themselves and their worlds. As the clinical and cultural profile of madness transformed over the twentieth century, musicals continued to delve into the experience of those living with mental pain, trauma, and unhappiness. Seriously Mad offers a dynamic account of stage musicals' engagement with historically significant theories about mental distress, illness, disability, and human variance in the United States. By exploring who is considered mad and what constitutes madness at different moments in U.S. history, Aleksei Grinenko shows how, in attempts to bring the musicals closer to "highbrow" sophistication, theater dramatized serious medical conditions and social problems. Among the many Broadway productions discussed are "Next to Normal," "A Strange Loop" "Sweeney Todd," "Man of La Mancha," "Dear World," "Anyone Can Whistle," "Gypsy," "Oklahoma!," and "Lady in the Dark."

Contents:

Intro

Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Part One: Madness in the Mind

One. "Make a Date with a Great Psychoanalyst...": Gazing Inward in the Dual Golden Age

Two. "Make Up Your Mind! Make Up Your Mind!": The Neurotic Interior and the Dynamic Unconscious in the 1940s and Beyond

Part Two: Madness in Society

Three. "There Are Heroes in the World...": Psychiatric Activism, Antipsychiatry, and Political Consciousness

Four. "To Dream the Impossible Dream...": Communities of Madness in the Musicals of the Long Sixties

Five. "Is That Just Disgusting?": Filth, Madness, and the City in Sweeney Todd and Other Musicals

Part Three: Madness in the Brain

Six. "What a Lovely Cure!": Staging the Interior in the New Age of Diagnostic Psychiatry

Seven. "Sing a Song of Forgetting...": Listening to the Unconscious in Next to Normal

Conclusion: Contemporary Visions of Madness as Depth Theater

Notes

Bibliography

Index.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 239-255) and index.

Description based on information from the publisher.

Other Format:

Print version: Grinenko, Aleksei Seriously Mad

ISBN:

9780472221332

0472221337