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Theater, Performance, and Music History

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This cluster of papers explores the evolution and cultural significance of American musical theatre, including its intersection with melodrama, operetta, identity, democracy, race, and gender. It delves into the historical, social, and artistic dimensions of Broadway productions and their impact on popular culture.

Keywords

American Musical Theatre; Melodrama; Broadway; The Wire; Operetta; Identity; Cultural Studies; Democracy; Race; Gender

America's musical life: a history

2001-05-01

Richard Crawford

D.W. Griffith and the origins of American narrative film: the early years at Biograph

1991-11-01

Tom Gunning

Melodrama: the cultural emergence of a genre

1997-04-01

Michael L. Hays , Anastasia Nikolopoulou

Introduction M.Hays & A.Nikolopoulou - PART I: GRAND NARRATIVE(S):VARIATIONS ON A THEME - Soldiers of the Queen M.Booth - The Empire Right or Wrong J.Davis - From Melodrama to Realism … Introduction M.Hays & A.Nikolopoulou - PART I: GRAND NARRATIVE(S):VARIATIONS ON A THEME - Soldiers of the Queen M.Booth - The Empire Right or Wrong J.Davis - From Melodrama to Realism T.Postlewait - Melodramatic Contingencies K.Tancheva - PART II: GENERIC PATTERNS AND SOCIAL CONSTRUCTS - On the Origins of the English Melodrama in the Tradition of Bourgeois Tragedy and Sentimental Drama L.Fietz - The Return of Martin Guerre in an Early Nineteenth Century French Melodrama B.T.Cooper - Historical Disruptions A.Nikolopoulou - PART III: RADICALISM CONTAINED - He Never Should Bow Down to a Domineering Frown M.Carlson - The Ideological Tack of Nautical Melodrama J.N.Cox - Radicalism in the Melodrama of the Early Nineteenth Century H.Ilsemann - PART IV: GENDER, CLASS, CULTURE - Parlour and Platform Melodrama D.Mayer - What the Heroine Taught, 1830-1870 L.Metayer - Representing a 'Great Distress' J.Williams & S.Watt - Appendix - List of Contributors - Index

The Broadway Musical: A Critical and Musical Survey

1992-09-01

Geoffrey Block , Joseph P. Swain

The Broadway musical, one of America's most distinctive contributions to Western music, has been chronicled, dissected, described, and debated, but never until now has its essential element--that glorious music--been analyzed … The Broadway musical, one of America's most distinctive contributions to Western music, has been chronicled, dissected, described, and debated, but never until now has its essential element--that glorious music--been analyzed directly in any significant detail. Moving beyond the anecdotes, production histories, and generalizations about theatrical style that mark so much of the critical literature, Joseph P. Swain offers a unique survey of the most important or representative musical plays, one that shows how the great Broadway composers have used the traditional tools of composition--melody, harmony, tonal movement, rhythm, and texture--to become powerful dramatists in their own right. Illustrated with over 150 musical excerpts--a unique feature that gives Swain's analysis unparalleled depth and precision--the book yields new insights at every turn. It shows how particular musical solutions to dramatic problems gave Showboat and Oklahoma! the power to change the course of the Broadway tradition, brought Carousel and West Side Story to worldwide recognition as masterpieces of their kind, and lent a light popular genre the formal complexity and emotional range to encompass a tremendous diversity of styles and materials, from Shakespearean drama (Kiss Me, Kate and West Side Story) to European opera (Porgy and Bess), and from age-old myth (My Fair Lady and Camelot) to still-current ethnic conflict (Fiddler on the Roof). All the great Broadway composers and musical-comedy teams are here--Jerome Kern, George Gershwin, Rodgers and Hammerstein, Frank Loesser, Leonard Bernstein, Lerner and Loewe--as well as a representative sample of the classic shows, including the sadly neglected The Most Happy Fella. In addition, Swain's thoughtful evaluation of the current scene illuminates issues of dramatic approach (Godspell), plot (A Chorus Line), subject matter (Jesus Christ Superstar and Evita), and musical rhetoric (Stephen Sondheim's output, exemplified by Sweeney Todd) that may determine the future course of the musical play. Precise in focus, uncommonly rich in detail, and accessible to fans and scholars alike, The Broadway Musical will have to be read by anyone concerned with contemporary American music and drama, and by anyone who hopes truly to know this supposedly best-known of music.

The Victorian Music Hall: Culture, Class and Conflict

1999-04-01

Martha Vicinus , Dagmar Kift , Roy Kift

Part I. The English Music Hall: 1. History 2. The music-hall programme 3. The audience Part II. Cultures in Conflict: 4. 1840-1865: rivalry in leisure 5. 1860-1877: the 'demon drink' … Part I. The English Music Hall: 1. History 2. The music-hall programme 3. The audience Part II. Cultures in Conflict: 4. 1840-1865: rivalry in leisure 5. 1860-1877: the 'demon drink' 6. 1875-1888: programmes and purifiers 7. The special case of London, 1840-1888 8. Controversies in the 1890s.

A survey of studies contrasting the quality of group performance and individual performance, 1920-1957.

1958-01-01

Irving Lorge , David J. Fox , Joel R. Davitz +1 more

The making of American audiences: from stage to television, 1750-1990

2000-11-01

Richard Butsch

In The Making of American Audiences, Richard Butsch provides a comprehensive survey of American entertainment audiences from the colonial period to the modern day. Providing coverage of theatre, opera, vaudeville, … In The Making of American Audiences, Richard Butsch provides a comprehensive survey of American entertainment audiences from the colonial period to the modern day. Providing coverage of theatre, opera, vaudeville, minstrelsy, movies, radio and television, he examines the evolution of audience practices as each genre supplanted another as the primary popular entertainment. Based on original historical research, this volume exposes how audiences made themselves through their practices - how they asserted control over their own entertainments and their own behaviour. Importantly, Butsch articulates two long-term processes: pacification and privatization. Whereas during the nineteenth century, overactive audiences represented a threat to civic order through their unruly behaviour, in the twentieth century, audiences have become more passive, dependent upon and controlled by media messages. This timely study serves as an important contribution to communication research, as well as American cultural history and cultural studies.

Analysing Musical Multimedia

2001-01-01

Carol Vernallis , Nicholas Cook

Foreword PART I Introduction to Part 1: Music and Meaning in the Commercials 1. Synaesthesia and Similarity 2. Multimedia as metaphor 3. Models of multimedia PART 2 Introduction to Part … Foreword PART I Introduction to Part 1: Music and Meaning in the Commercials 1. Synaesthesia and Similarity 2. Multimedia as metaphor 3. Models of multimedia PART 2 Introduction to Part 1: Steps Towards Analysis 4. Credit Where It's Due: Madonna's Material Girl 5. Disney's Dream: The Rite of Spring sequence from Fantasia 6. Reading film and re-reading opera: from Armide to Aria Conclusion: The Lonely Muse Index

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The American Film Musical

1994-01-01

Gillian B. Anderson , Rick Altman

PREFACE I. An Introduction to the Theory of Genre Analysis General Discourse on Meaning The Role of Generic Formations in Meaning Production The Role of the Critic Toward Objective Evaluation … PREFACE I. An Introduction to the Theory of Genre Analysis General Discourse on Meaning The Role of Generic Formations in Meaning Production The Role of the Critic Toward Objective Evaluation of Subjective Criticism Establishing a Corpus II. The American Film Musical as Dual-Focus Narrative III. The Structure of the American Film Musical The film process through a series of paired segments matching the male and female leads Each separate part of the film recapitulates the film's overall duality The basic sexual duality overlays a secondary dichotomy The marriage which resolves the primary (sexual) dichotomy also mediates between the two terms of the secondary (thematic) opposition IV. The Style of the American Film Musical Audio Dissolve Video Dissolve Personality Dissolve V. The Problem of Genre History Problems with Current Terminology Towards a New Terminology Defining the Corpus Reformulating Genre History The History of the American Film Musical: A New Approach VI. The Fairy Tale Musical Prehistory Sex as Sex Sex as Battle Sex as Adventure VII. The Show Musical The Sources of Show Musical Semantics Backstage: The Syntax of Illusion Taking it Out of the Theater Saving the Dying Myth: Reflexivity as Reinforcement VIII. The Folk Musical Elements of the Folk Musical Building a Folk Syntax A Folk Art in the Age of Mass Media IX. Genre and Culture The Fundamental Characteristics of Genre Film Symbolic Spectatorship Work and Entertainment The Musical's Operational Role The Practice of Music in the Age of Electronic Reproduction Conclusion BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTES NOTES YEARLY TABLE OF MUSICALS BY SUBGENRE INDEX

A History of the American Drama from the Beginning to the Civil War

1924-07-01

Fred Lewis Pattee , Arthur Hobson Quinn

Pursuits of Happiness: The Hollywood Comedy of Remarriage

1983-01-01

Gerald Mast , Stanley Cavell

Introduction: Words for a Conversation 1. Cons and Pros The Lady Eve 2. Knowledge as Transgression It Happened One Night 3. Leopards in Connecticut Bringing up Baby 4. The Importance … Introduction: Words for a Conversation 1. Cons and Pros The Lady Eve 2. Knowledge as Transgression It Happened One Night 3. Leopards in Connecticut Bringing up Baby 4. The Importance of Importance The Philadelphia Story 5. Counterfeiting Happiness His Girl Friday 6. The Courting of Marriage Adam's Rib 7. The Same and Different The Awful Truth Appendix: Film in the University Acknowledgments Index

American Musical Theatre: A Chronicle

1994-03-01

Thomas Riis , Gerald Bordman

The new edition of leading survey of American musical has been expanded and updated to cover 1999-2000 season. Covering more than 250 years o musical theater history, new edition of … The new edition of leading survey of American musical has been expanded and updated to cover 1999-2000 season. Covering more than 250 years o musical theater history, new edition of book Newsweek called the best reference of its kind is an ummatched blend of narrative history, expert critical judgement, and detailed, show-by-show, season-by-season decscription.

The Melodramatic Imagination

1984-12-31

Peter Brooks

In this lucid and fascinating book, Peter Brooks argues that melodrama is a crucial mode of expression in modern literature. After studying stage melodrama as a dominant popular form in … In this lucid and fascinating book, Peter Brooks argues that melodrama is a crucial mode of expression in modern literature. After studying stage melodrama as a dominant popular form in the nineteenth century, he moves on to Balzac and Henry James to show how these realist novelists created fiction using the rhetoric and excess of melodrama - in particular its secularized conflicts of good and evil, salvation and damnation. The Melodramatic Imagination has become a classic work for understanding theater, fiction, and film.

Raising Cain: blackface performance from Jim Crow to Hip Hop

1998-06-01

W. T. Lhamon

Dancing for Eels at Catherine Market The Blackface Lore Cycle Blame It on Cain Finding Jim Crow Notes Acknowledgments Index Dancing for Eels at Catherine Market The Blackface Lore Cycle Blame It on Cain Finding Jim Crow Notes Acknowledgments Index

Beyond Pleasure: Exploring the Eudaimonic Entertainment Experience

2012-09-05

Werner Wirth , Matthias Höfer , Holger Schramm

We examine the notion of eudaimonic entertainment during exposure to a sad but meaningful movie, using a new measure consisting of 5 dimensions derived from research on positive psychology. We, … We examine the notion of eudaimonic entertainment during exposure to a sad but meaningful movie, using a new measure consisting of 5 dimensions derived from research on positive psychology. We, thereby, transfer the conception of eudaimonic well-being to the conception of entertainment. Results of a confirmatory factor analysis show that the 5 dimensions can be further condensed into 2 second-order factors. We applied these new measures in a study in which the ending of a movie was manipulated (sad vs. happy). The results provide both discriminant and convergent validity and show that hedonic entertainment measures were affected by the manipulation, but that eudaimonic entertainment measures were unaffected. A second study provided further evidence for the validity of the construct.

The cultural front: the laboring of American culture in the twentieth century

1997-06-01

As garment workers, longshoremen, autoworkers, sharecroppers and clerks took to the streets, striking and organizing unions in the midst of the Depression, artists, writers and filmmakers joined the insurgent social … As garment workers, longshoremen, autoworkers, sharecroppers and clerks took to the streets, striking and organizing unions in the midst of the Depression, artists, writers and filmmakers joined the insurgent social movement by creating a cultural front. Disney cartoonists walked picket lines, and Billie Holiday sand 'Strange Fruit' at the left-wing cabaret, Cafe Society. Duke Ellington produced a radical musical, Jump for Joy, New York garment workers staged the legendary Broadway revue Pins and Needles, and Orson Welles and his Mercury players took their labor operas and anti-fascist Shakespeare to Hollywood and made Citizen Kane. A major reassessment of US cultural history, The Cultural Front is a vivid mural of this extraordinary upheaval which reshaped American culture in the twentieth century.

Bodies in dissent: spectacular performances of race and freedom, 1850-1910

2007-04-01

I wonder if dis is me?By golly, I is free as a frog.But maybe I is mistaken; maybe dis ain't me.Cato, is dis you?Yes, seer.Well, now it is me, an' … I wonder if dis is me?By golly, I is free as a frog.But maybe I is mistaken; maybe dis ain't me.Cato, is dis you?Yes, seer.Well, now it is me, an' I em a free man.But, stop!I muss change my name, kase ole massa might foller me, and somebody might tell him dat dey see Cato; so I'll change my name, and den he won't know me ef he sees me.Now, what shall I call myself ?I'm now in a suspectable part of the country, an' I muss have a suspectable name.Ah! I'll call myself Alexander Washington Napoleon Pompey Caesar.Dar, now, dat's a good long, suspectable name, and everybody will suspect me.Let me see; I wonder ef I can't make up a song on my escape!I'll try.As he subsequently confesses in song, Cato has literally stolen the clothes o√ his ''ole massa's'' back.''I dress myself,'' he proudly proclaims, ''in his bess clothes, an' jump into de street.''Piling on an excess of ironically inflated monikers bestowed upon the enslaved, Cato inverts his own crisis in naming himself by turning that dilemma into a multi-vocal, insurrectionist act.In his soliloquy, he transmogrifies his own self-fragmentation into signifying parody.Speaking on dual frequencies as both captor and captive, gentleman and minstrel clown, Cato (re)dresses himself both in the role of the ''suspicious'' fugitive as well as the ''respectable'' master, conflating and perverting the boundaries between each role.His drag act simultaneously stages the spectacle of a fugitive asserting his subjectivity through the tools of performance and using those same tools to mock and destablize the subjectivity of the ruling class.During this moment of self-making at the site of masquerade, Cato thus rejects the unchanging condition of burnt-cork ''blackness'' and instead harnesses the pleasures of fugitive emancipation borne out in costume.He has, in e√ect, traded in the sycophancy and self-abnegation of blackface persona.Whereas, for much of the play, his minstrel antics tra≈c in slippery and unsavory racial caricature, Cato's unlikely conversion from feckless burntcork puppet into ruminative and resistant runaway manifests the sociopolitical commentary at the heart of The Escape.Stringing together an inventive combination of ironies, malapropisms, and neologisms, he turns existential crisis into spiritual jubilation, self-estrangement into ecstatic selfrealization, and haphazard disguise into philosophical enlightenment.''Free as a frog,'' Cato encounters self-reckoning at the site of his alien condition and wriggles free of enslavement to perform a counternarrative to that of minstrelsy's master script.In his search for ''a place where man is man, ef sich dar can be found,'' he locates this site in the act of disguise.≤ Cato's encounter with himself at the very moment he commits to quite literally ''putting on ole massa'' provides the occasion to contemplate the profound ironies of black identity formation and self-recognition in the century that marked African Americans' freedom from enslavement.His startling and paradoxical movement toward self-recognition and a kind of alien(ated) awareness of the self-''I wonder if dis is me?''-confronts and transforms

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Making Americans: Jews and the Broadway musical.

2005-01-01

Harley Erdman

The Place of the Stage: License, Play, and Power in Renaissance England

1988-01-01

Gerard Wegemer , Steven Mullaney

Behind the Mask of the Strong Black Woman: Voice and the Embodiment of a Costly Performance

2010-09-01

Averil Y. Clarke

American women playwrights

2012-05-24

Brenda Murphy

The standard historical narrative of American drama and theater tends to privilege male writers even more than the narratives of fiction or poetry do. In the historical narrative, the important … The standard historical narrative of American drama and theater tends to privilege male writers even more than the narratives of fiction or poetry do. In the historical narrative, the important aesthetic developments and cultural moments tend to be linked to the careers of playwrights, almost exclusively male, who have achieved fame, fortune, and critical acclaim, principally in the last 100 years. Thus Eugene O'Neill is linked with early realism and modernism; Clifford Odets with the leftist theater of the 1930s; Tennessee Williams with post-World War II psychological realism; Arthur Miller with politically minded realism; Edward Albee with absurdist drama; Sam Shepard with hyperrealism and postmodernism; David Mamet with a tough dialogic realism characterized by the pseudonymous "Mametspeak"; Tony Kushner with an open, epic theater that addresses issues of politics, identity, and religious myth; August Wilson with African American history, myth, and identity. A similar list of female writers and their cultural moments might include Rachel Crothers with the social realism of the Progressive Era and the society comedy of the Jazz Age; Susan Glaspell with feminist realism and modernism; Lillian Hellman with the social melodrama of the 1930s and '40s; Lorraine Hansberry with the social realism of the Civil Rights movement; Adrienne Kennedy and Alice Childress with experimental hybrid dramatic forms in the 1950s and '60s; Mar´ıa Irene Forn´es, Ntozake Shange, and Megan Terry with feminist experiments in the 1970s; Marsha Norman, Wendy Wasserstein, and Beth Henley with a neo-realism that emphasizes women's issues in the 1970s and '80s; and, into the twenty-first century, Paula Vogel with an open dramatic form and a focus on family, gender, and identity; Suzan-Lori Parks with remaking both dramatic structure and American history and myth; Anna Deavere Smith and Eve Ensler with a new, socially aware monologic theater.

Gender and the musical canon

1994-01-01

Yoruba Ritual: Performers, Play, Agency

1993-01-01

Edith Turner , Margaret Thompson Drewal

List of Illustrations A Companion Video ReaderOs Road Map Acknowledgments 1. Theory and Method in the Study of Ritual Performance 2. Yoruba Play and the Tranformation of Ritual 3. The … List of Illustrations A Companion Video ReaderOs Road Map Acknowledgments 1. Theory and Method in the Study of Ritual Performance 2. Yoruba Play and the Tranformation of Ritual 3. The Ontological Journey 4. New Beginnings 5. Establishing the Self 6. Ritual Play about Play: Performing Miracles in Honor of the Ancestors 7. The Collective in Conflict, or, the Play of Personalities 8. From Militarism to Dandyism: The Shaping of Performance 9. Reinventing Ritual: The Imewuro Annual Rally 10. Gender Play Envoi Glossary Notes Sources Cited Index

Melodrama and meaning: history, culture, and the films of Douglas Sirk

1994-12-01

Acknowledgments Introduction: The Many Faces of Melodrama 1. The OProgressiveO Auteur, Melodrama, and Canonicity 2. Selling Melodrama: Sex, Affluence, and Written on the Wind 3. Tastemaking: Reviews, Popular Canons, and … Acknowledgments Introduction: The Many Faces of Melodrama 1. The OProgressiveO Auteur, Melodrama, and Canonicity 2. Selling Melodrama: Sex, Affluence, and Written on the Wind 3. Tastemaking: Reviews, Popular Canons, and Soap Operas 4. Star Gossip: Rock Hudson and the Burdens of Masculinity 5. Mass Camp and the Old Hollywood Melodrama Today Conclusion: Cinema, Ideology, History Notes Filmography Bibliography Index

Playing the race card: melodramas of black and white from Uncle Tom to O.J. Simpson

2001-11-01

Illustrations ix Preface xiii Acknowledgments xvii Introduction: Playing the Race Card 3 Chapter One: The American Melodramatic Mode 10 Chapter Two: A Wonderful, 'Leaping 'Fish: Varieties of Uncle Tom 45 … Illustrations ix Preface xiii Acknowledgments xvii Introduction: Playing the Race Card 3 Chapter One: The American Melodramatic Mode 10 Chapter Two: A Wonderful, 'Leaping 'Fish: Varieties of Uncle Tom 45 Chapter Three: Anti-Tom and The Birth of a Nation 96 Chapter Four: Posing as Black, Passing as White: The Melos of Black and White Melodrama in the Jazz Age 136 Chapter Five: Rewriting the Plantation Legend: Scarlett Totes a Weary Load 187 Chapter Six: Home Sweet Africa: Alex Haley's and TV's Roots 220 Chapter Seven: Trials of Black and White: California v. Powell and The People v. Orenthal James Simpson 252 Conclusion: Our Melodramatic Racial Fix 296 Notes 311 Bibliography 369 Index 385

The American musical and the performance of personal identity

2007-07-01

Raymond Knapp

Something for the boys: musical theater and gay culture

2000-06-01

John M. Clum

Melodramatic Tactics

1995-10-01

Elaine Hadley

This pathbreaking work analyzes melodrama as not merely a theatrical genre but as a behavioral paradigm of the nineteenth century, manifest in the theater, in literature, and in society. It … This pathbreaking work analyzes melodrama as not merely a theatrical genre but as a behavioral paradigm of the nineteenth century, manifest in the theater, in literature, and in society. It shows how the melodramatic mode reaffirmed the familial, hierarchical, and public grounds for ethical behavior and identity that characterized models of social exchange and organization.

Just before jazz: Black musical theater in New York, 1890-1915

1990-03-01

What made pistachio nuts?: early sound comedy and the vaudeville aesthetic

1993-05-01

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The Jacobean and Caroline Stage

1957-04-01

C. J. Sisson , G. E. Bentley

Black Musical Theatre: From Coontown to Dreamgirls

1990-09-01

Allen Woll

Book Review| September 01 1990 Black Musical Theatre: From Coontown to Dreamgirls Woll, Allen. Black Musical Theatre: From Coontown to Dreamgirls. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1989. Allen Woll … Book Review| September 01 1990 Black Musical Theatre: From Coontown to Dreamgirls Woll, Allen. Black Musical Theatre: From Coontown to Dreamgirls. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1989. Allen Woll Allen Woll Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Black Sacred Music (1990) 4 (2): 117–120. https://doi.org/10.1215/10439455-4.2.117 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Permissions Search Site Citation Allen Woll; Black Musical Theatre: From Coontown to Dreamgirls. Black Sacred Music 1 September 1990; 4 (2): 117–120. doi: https://doi.org/10.1215/10439455-4.2.117 Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search Books & JournalsAll JournalsBlack Sacred Music Search Advanced Search The text of this article is only available as a PDF. Copyright © 1990 by Duke University Press1990 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

Gender and the Musical Canon

1994-12-01

Renée Cox Lorraine , Marcia J. Citron

Melodrama Revised

1998-12-31

Linda Williams

Blood talk: American race melodrama and the culture of the occult

2004-02-01

Susan Gillman

The United States has seldom known a period of greater social and cultural volatility, especially in terms of race relations, than the years from the end of Reconstruction to the … The United States has seldom known a period of greater social and cultural volatility, especially in terms of race relations, than the years from the end of Reconstruction to the First World War. In this study, Susan Gillman explores the rise during this period of a remarkable genre - the race melodrama - and the way in which it converged with literary trends, popular history, fringe movements, and mainstream interest in supernatural phenomena. Blood Talk shows how race melodrama emerged from abolitionist works such as Uncle Tom's Cabin and surprisingly manifested itself in a set of more aesthetically and politically varied works, such as historical romances, sentimental novels, the travel literature of Mark Twain, the regional fiction of Kate Chopin and George Washington Cable, and the work of W.E.B. Du Bois. Gillman then uses the race melodrama to show how racial discourses in the United States became entangled with occultist phenomena, from the rituals of the Klu Klux Klan and the concept of messianic second-sight to the production of conspiracy theories and studies of dreams and trances. A work of ambitious scope and compelling cross-connections, Blood Talk sets new agendas for students of American literature and culture.

Queer Virgins and Virgin Queans on the Early Modern Stage

2000-06-01

Mary Bly

Abstract Queer Virgins and Virgin Queans looks at the early modern theatre through the lens of obscure and obscene puns--especially 'queer' puns, those that carry homoerotic resonances and speak to … Abstract Queer Virgins and Virgin Queans looks at the early modern theatre through the lens of obscure and obscene puns--especially 'queer' puns, those that carry homoerotic resonances and speak to homoerotic desires. In particular, it resurrects the operations of a small boys' company known as the first Whitefriars, which performed for about nine months in 1607-8. As a group, the plays performed by this company exhibit an unusually dense array of bawdy puns, whose eroticism is extremely interesting, given that the focus of eros is the male body. The laughter recoverable from Whitefriars plays harnesses the pun's inherent doubleness to homoerotic pleasure; in these plays, 'the bawdy hand of the dial' is always 'on the pricke of noone'. Mary Bly's analysis depends on the nature of punning itself, and the inflections of language and the creativity that marked Whitefriars punsters, with special emphasis on the effect of puns on an audience. What happens to audience members who sit shoulder to shoulder and laugh at homoerotic quibbles? What is the effect of catching a queer pun's double meaning in a group rather than while alone? How can we characterize those auditors, within the convoluted, if fascinating, theories of erotic identity offered by queer theorists?

The Culture of Opera Buffa in Mozart's Vienna

1999-12-31

Mary Hunter

Mozart's comic operas are among the masterworks of Western civilization, and yet the musical environment in which Mozart and his librettist Lorenzo da Ponte wrote these now-popular operas has received … Mozart's comic operas are among the masterworks of Western civilization, and yet the musical environment in which Mozart and his librettist Lorenzo da Ponte wrote these now-popular operas has received little critical attention. In this richly detailed book, Mary Hunter offers a sweeping, synthetic view of opera buffa in the lively theatrical world of late-eighteenth-century Vienna. Opera buffa (Italian-language comic opera) persistently entertained audiences at a time when Joseph was striving for a German national theater. Hunter attributes opera buffa's success to its ability to provide "sheer" pleasure and hence explores how the genre functioned as entertainment. She argues that opera buffa, like mainstream film today, projects a social world both recognizable and distinct from reality. It raises important issues while containing them in the "merely entertaining" frame of the occasion, as well as presenting them as a series of easily identifiable dramatic and musical conventions. Exploring nearly eighty comic operas, Hunter shows how the arias and ensembles convey a multifaceted picture of the repertory's social values and habits. In a concluding chapter, she discusses Cos" fan tutte as a work profoundly concerned with the conventions of its repertory and with the larger idea of convention itself and reveals the ways Mozart and da Ponte pointedly converse with their immediate contemporaries.

Incongruous entertainment: camp, cultural value, and the MGM musical

2006-10-01

Steven Cohan

Acknowledgments vii Introduction 1 1. Improbable Stuff: Camp and the MGM House Style 41 2. The Lady is a Camp: Glamour, Star Turns, and the Boys in the Chorus 88 … Acknowledgments vii Introduction 1 1. Improbable Stuff: Camp and the MGM House Style 41 2. The Lady is a Camp: Glamour, Star Turns, and the Boys in the Chorus 88 3. Dancing with Balls: Sissies, Sailors, and the Camp Masculinity of Gene Kelly 149 4. What a Glorious Classic: Singin' in the Rain and Mass-Camp Recycling 200 5. Hollywood's Most Precious Jewels: The MGM Musical's Return As a Camp Commodity 246 6. Judy on the Net: Garland, Camp, and Contemporary Fandom 287 Conclusion 337 Notes 343 Works Cited 353 Index 361

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Representation, Performative Exchange and Afropolitanism: Rethinking Opera Production in Nigeria through The Magic Flute

2025-06-24

Joshua Tolulope David | Cambridge Opera Journal

Abstract In this article, I consider the 2012–13 productions of The Magic Flute in Lagos, Nigeria, by the Musical Society of Nigeria (MUSON), as a means of rethinking broad conceptions … Abstract In this article, I consider the 2012–13 productions of The Magic Flute in Lagos, Nigeria, by the Musical Society of Nigeria (MUSON), as a means of rethinking broad conceptions of opera performance in postcolonial Africa. I explore the extent to which visual representation in this production creates cultural contact, exchange and hybridity, affording a pathway for experiencing opera from both Western and African perspectives without homogenisation or a clash of differences. Arguing against notions of race that pit Africa against the West, this study privileges Achille Mbembe’s writings on Afropolitanism as a framework for examining the multiple modes of meaning and identity created through this production. By scrutinising the textuality of visual elements and conceiving them as sites of localised ideological or identity struggles, I argue specifically that opera in Nigeria requires a critical framework that moves beyond notions of ‘whiteness’ and indigenisation. I will show that this staging invokes indigenous knowledge from Nigerian traditional religious and socio-cultural conceptions. In other words, mixed codes of visual elements operate as cultural signifiers that perpetuate an Afropolitan identity through which audiences interact with this art form.

Coda

2025-06-19

Anthea Kraut | Oxford University Press eBooks

Abstract The coda offers a close reading of a televised duet between the African American star Lena Horne and the white dancer/dance-in/choreographer Carol Haney on a 1962 episode of the … Abstract The coda offers a close reading of a televised duet between the African American star Lena Horne and the white dancer/dance-in/choreographer Carol Haney on a 1962 episode of the Perry Como show. Though perhaps an unlikely final scene in a history of film musical dancing, the performance is suggestive of the trajectory of a number of the book’s key figures, who found work in television when movie musicals entered a period of decline. Despite the absence of information about the conditions of production of the number, the duet is an opportunity to contemplate what dance-ins can teach us about how to read for the traces of off-screen histories in images of dancing bodies. In the (almost) synchronized dancing of two differently racialized women occupying different positions in Hollywood’s corporeal ecosystem, we can detect echoes of the racialized and gendered relations of reproduction that structure dance on-screen.

Female Reproductive Labor and White Corporeal Debt in Singin’ in the Rain

2025-06-19

Anthea Kraut | Oxford University Press eBooks

Abstract This chapter revisits questions of credit and debt in the celebrated 1952 film musical Singin’ in the Rain to demonstrate how white women’s dancing bodies participate in the talent … Abstract This chapter revisits questions of credit and debt in the celebrated 1952 film musical Singin’ in the Rain to demonstrate how white women’s dancing bodies participate in the talent “relocations” that the movie both foregrounds and conceals. The chapter focuses on the relationship between Debbie Reynolds, who was a novice dancer when she was cast in the film, and the two white women dancers—assistant choreographer Carol Haney and dance-in Jeanne Coyne—who helped shape Reynolds’s filmic body. Uniting gendered and racial analyses of the film, the chapter returns to the concept of surrogation to emphasize the gendered forms of labor and the multiracial genealogies through which the musical’s dancing was reproduced. While the guise of white credibility enabled Reynolds to mask her intercorporeal and multiracial debts, the presence of the Puerto Rican Rita Moreno in the film haunts the chains of white corporeal debt that bind Reynolds to Haney and Coyne.

Index of Songs and Dance Tunes

2025-06-18

| University Press of Mississippi eBooks

The Jubilee Singers Under Mrs. James A. Myers

2025-06-15

| University Press of Mississippi eBooks

The Sullivans of Washington County

2025-06-15

| University Press of Mississippi eBooks

The New Audience for Old TV: Considering the Resurgent Popularity of The Sopranos

2025-06-12

Amy Boyle | Continuum

Verses Sent to Mrs. T. B.

2025-06-11

Norman Adult | Routledge eBooks

CHAPLIN

2025-06-02

| Presses de l’Université de Montréal eBooks

Masques and Dramatick Operas

2025-06-02

John Eccles | A-R Editions eBooks

Emerging Bodo Modern Plays: Looking at Historical and Thematic Aspects

2025-06-01

Rustam Brahma | Noesis Literary.

The paper explores the dramatic tradition in Bodo, its historical background, major works and playwrights. It argues that the early twentieth-century consciousness of Bodo ethnicity and its reformist spirit prepared … The paper explores the dramatic tradition in Bodo, its historical background, major works and playwrights. It argues that the early twentieth-century consciousness of Bodo ethnicity and its reformist spirit prepared the ground for the Bodo literary movement of the 1950s, especially in the field of poetry and drama, and the language and script movement of the 1980s. The Bodos struggled to express themselves and represent their socio-cultural milieus and their voice of resistance. This new social condition demanded a new popular media to disseminate consciousness among the masses. Bodo theatrical tradition began with Jatra Gan (open field theatre), led by social leaders, reformers, educationists, and writers to reform and educate the common masses through theatrical entertainment. Thus, Satish Chandra Basumatary’s Nalabuha (1919), the first unpublished play, emerged, and then Kamal Kumar Brahma’s Gwdan Faichali (1959), the first Bodo modern play, came. Modern Bodo plays were written in the 1950s with specific objectives of social reformation, education and enlightenment, critiquing life and society. Kokrajhar was the epicentre of the Bodo theatrical development, where a few eminent playwrights were born. The paper focuses on categorisation and the thematic concerns of the major Bodo modern plays. Keywords: Bodo drama, Jatra Gan, modern play, theatre, theme, tradition.

Blues Mamas And Broadway Belters: Black Women, Voice, and The Musical Stage by Masi Asare (review)

2025-06-01

| Theatre Journal

Directing August Wilson on the British Stage

2025-05-31

Lynette Goddard | Cambridge University Press eBooks

Rewriting Shakespeare for Gen Z: Musical 〈Inside William: Breaking the Quill〉

2025-05-31

Hee-Jean Kim | The Journal of the Korea Contents Association

Controversies Over Historical Distortion in Historical Films & Dramas and Review of Alternative Cases: Seeking a Balance between Historicity and Creativity

2025-05-31

Paek-chol Kim | Academic Association of Global Cultural Contents

Visual media is an effective tool for broadening the public’s knowledge horizon. It is a well-known fact that movies and dramas have more impact than dry documentaries. Historical films & … Visual media is an effective tool for broadening the public’s knowledge horizon. It is a well-known fact that movies and dramas have more impact than dry documentaries. Historical films & dramas have often been misunderstood in some circles as tools for recreating or educating about history, and caution is necessary, as the colonial legacy left by Western Orientalism during the 19th-century era of imperialism still influences creative activities today. Nevertheless, Since historical dramas have a high degree of creativity, it is difficult to demand the same level of accuracy as professional history studies. Therefore, it is necessary to devise effective measures to overcome these challenges and gain recognition for creativity. First, a clear sense of thematic purpose. since it is practically difficult to verify individual events, it is necessary to examine what historical perspective is embedded throughout the entire work. Second, the attribution of temporality. To achieve this, one should meticulously verify the historical background using academic research and then freely structure the content. Furthermore, if fictional characters are introduced without altering real historical figures, it would be possible to strike a balance between historicity and creativity. Third, the utilization of fusion historical films & dramas. This could involve setting up a fictional dynasty, combining fantasy genres, adapting contemporary issues into different times and spaces, or using time travel as a narrative device. Ultimately, through these various methods, it is necessary to recognize the boundaries between history and creative works and allow both to develop their distinct characteristics.

EDWARD P. JONES VIA HIS OWN WORDS: A REVIEW OF HIS INTERVIEWS

2025-05-30

Subhashree Ojha , Tanutrushna Panigrahi | International Journal For Multidisciplinary Research

This research work reviews the conversations and interviews of Edward P. Jones and through them traces the ways in which Jones's work has evolved and how his ideas on fiction … This research work reviews the conversations and interviews of Edward P. Jones and through them traces the ways in which Jones's work has evolved and how his ideas on fiction writing, on Washington D.C. as the fictional place, the craft of his fictions and the black lives in America have found shape. Edward P. Jones is the author of two short story collections, Lost in the City (1992) and All Aunt Hagar’s Children (2006) and his 2004 Pulitzer Prize winning novel The Known World. Jones has written a few texts but he has been already regarded as one of the major contemporary canonical African-American short story writers because of the portrayal of the new voice of the African-American communities. In all his majority of his interviews Jones emphasises on the need to focus on the kind of unique characters he has created making a symbol out of Washington D.C. His process of imagination and the depiction of the Black life is the eye of these narratives. Edward P. Jones lived in Washington D.C. and in his interviews, he is talking about his experiences at the place and has tried to build a network of his characters and their responses to the place and the city people. He is creating a unique world with the place and the characters making a symbol out of them. While in some of the interviews he talks about the impact of his real-life incidents on these stories, in some he does refute the same. This paper tries to closely read his published interviews and bring significance to the loopholes in order to understand his art and craft and his techniques.

FANTHEATRE AND THE EMANCIPATED SPECTATOR IN A VERY POTTER MUSICAL

2025-05-30

Louie Lang Norman | University of Iowa Press eBooks

Sleeping through The Big Lebowski: Sleep, Dreams, and Rest in the Coen Brothers' Films and Jeff Bridges' Music

2025-05-27

Thomas Britt

This paper examines incidents and themes of sleeping, dreaming, and resting within Joel and Ethan Coen's early filmography and their intensification in the 1998 feature film The Big Lebowski. These … This paper examines incidents and themes of sleeping, dreaming, and resting within Joel and Ethan Coen's early filmography and their intensification in the 1998 feature film The Big Lebowski. These incidents and themes are also present, to some degree, in certain Raymond Chandler detective stories and adaptations thereof, which influenced The Big Lebowski. The Big Lebowski involves a convoluted mystery that prevents its characters, especially protagonist The Dude (Jeff Bridges) from resting, so his quest for ultimate relaxation goes unresolved. Sleeping Tapes, a later work of sleep music by Bridges, serves as a spiritual successor to The Big Lebowski by providing the relaxation sought by The Dude and positioning Bridges as a sleep and dream guide for listeners.

Queer Opera by Andrew Sutherland (review)

2025-05-24

Flamenco Music: History, Forms, Culture by Peter Manuel (review)

2025-05-24

Voice, Slavery, and Race in Seventeenth-Century Florence by Emily Wilbourne (review)

2025-05-24

Theme of Class Conflict in the Plays of John Osborne: a Critical Overview of “Look Back in Anger”

2025-05-23

Kabir Yadav , Somveer | International Journal For Multidisciplinary Research

This paper discusses about the theme of class conflict in John Osborne’s play Look Back in Anger (1956) which is widely regarded as a transformative work in modern British theatre. … This paper discusses about the theme of class conflict in John Osborne’s play Look Back in Anger (1956) which is widely regarded as a transformative work in modern British theatre. Osborne presented a criticism of post-war British society via the character of Jimmy Porter who is a working-class yet university-educated protagonist. Jimmy Porter's misery and fury capture was presented in this play along with the disenchantment of a generation unable to balance its intellectual aspirations with its social reality. This paper aims at analysing the themes being used for Class conflicts through the character of Jimmy Porter throughout the play as Jimmy meets the strict British class system; the play described his existential and emotional battle in the novel. As per the play, Jimmy uses strong discourse and emotional outbursts to convey the hopelessness of people trapped in between the immobility of class and the success of an education. This study explored the Osborne's depiction of Jimmy's dissatisfaction, his failed search for identity, and his contempt of the detached attitude of upper-class people. Drawing comparisons with more general literary tendencies in the process, it also looks at how class consciousness, education, gender conventions, and social injustice affect personal connections in the theatre. Osborne's Look Back in Anger not only exposes the psychological and cultural ramifications of class conflict but also acts as a strong critique of the illusions of social mobility that permeated Britain throughout the 1950s.

Sustaining Hybrid Cultural Identities: Education and Careers of Thai Classical Singers in Western Opera

2025-05-20

Fueanglada Prawang Carlson , Bablu Kumar Dhar , Aritach Tantipanjwit

This study examines how Thai singers trained in Western classical music navigate educational and career pathways that contribute to the cultural sustainability of opera in Thailand. Through performance documentation and … This study examines how Thai singers trained in Western classical music navigate educational and career pathways that contribute to the cultural sustainability of opera in Thailand. Through performance documentation and semi-structured interviews with 46 professional singers—most of whom studied abroad but returned to Thailand—the research identifies patterns in training, mobility, and employment. While all but two participants held university degrees, a significant number pursued advanced studies overseas, particularly in Austria, often supported by scholarships such as ASEA-UNINET. The findings reveal the critical role of international education and funding in fostering access to global opera traditions, while simultaneously enabling artists to sustain and adapt these traditions within a Thai cultural context. This article situates Thai classical singers as cultural mediators who preserve and transform Western operatic heritage through local performance, education, and hybrid identity formation. It highlights how such artistic mobility fosters cultural resilience and reinforces the importance of inclusive policy frameworks that support the continuity of diverse musical legacies in a globalized world.

Consequences of Laughter: Reflections on Performing Comedic Self- Deprecation and Reacting to Deprecation in General

2025-05-19

Su Heng Yi

Generous Laughs: The Comedic Plentitude of Maria Bamford

2025-05-19

Shannon Herbert

Broadway Bodies: A Critical History of Conformity

2025-05-13

Sara Reimers

The Broadway Musical

2025-05-09

Michelle Dvoskin

THE CLASSICAL ORIGINS AND MODERN EXPRESSIONS OF “DON’T SHOOT THE MESSENGER”

2025-05-06

David Frank

By the Shallow Rivers of Babylon: Musical Mashups and the Sound of Lost Music in The Merry Wives of Windsor

2025-05-05

J. G. Wylde

InThe Merry Wives of Windsor, there is a humorous sound-based musical moment in act 3, scene 1 that no longer resonates with contemporary audiences; the sounds evoked in the text … InThe Merry Wives of Windsor, there is a humorous sound-based musical moment in act 3, scene 1 that no longer resonates with contemporary audiences; the sounds evoked in the text and intended for performance on the stage have become obsolete. This article begins by investigating the original sounds and meanings of the sonic moment in the play, exploring what they would have sounded like and what they meant to an Elizabethan audience. It then turns to three twentieth- and twenty-first-century productions that have contended with this outdated sonic moment in funny, memorable, and very different ways, asking how new productions can harness new sounds to capture old meanings.

CAST OF PLAYERS

2025-05-04

CHAPTER THREE Female Performers and the Spectacular State

2025-05-04

‘She’s (Not) There’: Musical theatre ghosts, Gwen Verdon and the Broadway revivals of Sweet Charity

2025-05-01

Bryan M. Vandevender | Studies in Musical Theatre

The memory of acclaimed theatre performances (what Marvin Carlson refers to as ‘ghosts’) pervade the musical theatre repertoire and frequently emerge from a given work’s inaugural first-class production. In many … The memory of acclaimed theatre performances (what Marvin Carlson refers to as ‘ghosts’) pervade the musical theatre repertoire and frequently emerge from a given work’s inaugural first-class production. In many cases, the originating actor’s performance circulates through popular culture for a protracted period of time by way of repeated stage revivals or mediated records: cast albums, television performances and feature film adaptations. The greater the number of performance documents or the longer the association with the role, the more enduring the musical theatre ghost. Gwen Verdon’s turn as Charity Hope Valentine in the inaugural Broadway production of Sweet Charity (1966) represents an exception to this rule as recorded documents of her performance are comparatively nominal, she did not remain closely affiliated with the role once the inaugural production closed and she did not appear in the feature film adaptation. Even so, reviews of Sweet Charity ’s 1986 and 2005 Broadway revivals confirm that Verdon’s performance haunts the property. In this article, I contend that her ghost persists due to her long association with the inaugural production’s director, Bob Fosse, and the fact that she co-authored the musical’s original choreography with him.