Critical Companion to the American Stage Musical

This Critical Companion to the American Stage Musical provides the perfect introductory text for students of theatre, music and cultural studies. It traces the history and development of the industry and art form in America with a particular focus on its artistic and commercial development in New York City from the early 20th century to the present. Attention is paid to the series of commercial, artistic and cultural collisions that occurred during the century, each of which helped transform the stage musical for an ever-renewing, increasingly broad and diverse audience: the jazz age, the World War II era, the Off Off Broadway movement in the 1960s, the British invasion in the 1980s, and the media age at the turn of the century.

A number of supplementary essays by other leading scholars provide a sharp focus on a couple of productions that best exemplify each of the cultural collisions that helped shape the art form. For students they provide models of varying approaches and interpretation, equipping them with the skills and understanding to develop their own analysis of key productions.

Table of Contents
Introduction
Chapter 1: The Birth of (The Popular Culture of) a Nation
Chapter 2: The Civil War Era to the Gilded Age
Chapter 3: The Early 20th Century
Chapter 4: The Great Depression to World War II
Chapter 5: World War II and the Postwar Years
Chapter 6: The 1960s to the 1980s
Chapter 7: The 1990s to the New Millennium
Critical Perspectives
Chapter 8: Putting It Together, by Robert Meffe (San Diego State University, USA)
Chapter 9: Making Audiences, by Stacy Wolf (Princeton Univesity, USA)
Chapter 10: The Off-Off-Off-Off Broadway Musical, by Laura MacDonald (University of Portsmouth, UK)
Chapter 11: Today Broadway, Tomorrow the World, by Jessica Sternfeld (Chapman University, USA)
Chapter 12: Ways of Knowing: Approaching the Stage Musical from Different Directions, by Elizabeth T. Craft (Harvard University, USA) and Johanna Dee Das (Williams College, USA)
Endnotes
Bibliography
Notes on Contributors
Index

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