Gender, Sex, and Sexuality in Musical Theatre

He/She/They Could Have Danced All Night

Edited by Kelly Kessler

Publication date:

13 March 2023

Publisher

Intellect Books

Dimensions:

244x170mm
7x10"

ISBN-13: 9781789386196

Critics and fans alike often mistake theatrical song and dance as evoking a sweeping sense of simplicity, heteronormativity, and traditionalism. Nothing drove home this cultural misunderstanding for Kelly Kessler as when a relative insisted she watch the Clint Eastwood-Lee Marvin cinematic transfer of Paddy Chayefsky’s Paint Your Wagon (1969) with a young niece and nephew because it was a ‘sweet movie.’ In the relative’s memory, good old-fashioned singing and dancing—matched with the power of an assumed hegemonic embrace of social norms—far outweighed the whoremongering, alcoholism, wife-selling, and what appears to be narratively sanctioned polyamory.

This collection seeks to trouble such an over-idealized impression of musical theatre. Tackling Rockettes, divas, and chorus boys; hit shows such as Hamilton and Spring Awakening; and lesser-known but ground-breaking gems like Erin Markey’s A Ride on The Irish Cream and Kirsten Childs’s Bella: An American Tall Tale.

Gender, Sex and Sexuality in Musical Theatre: He/She/They Could Have Danced All Night takes a broad look at musical theatre across a range of intersecting lenses such as race, nation, form, dance, casting, marketing, pedagogy, industry, platform-specificity, stardom, politics, and so on. This collection assembles an amazing group of established and emergent musical theatre scholars to wrestle with the complexities of the gendered and sexualized musical theatre form. Gender and desire have long been at the heart of the musical, whether because ‘birds and bees’ (and educated fleas’) were doing it, a farm girl simply couldn’t ‘say no,’ or one’s ‘tits and ass’ were preventing them from landing the part.

An exciting and vibrant collection of articles from the archives of Studies in Musical Theatre, with contributions from Ryan Donovan, Michele Dvoskin, Sherrill Gow, Jiyoon Jung, David Haldane Lawrence, Stephanie Lim, Dustyn Martinich, Adrienne Gibbons Oehlers, Deborah Paredez, Alejandro Postigo, George Rodosthenous, Janet Werther, Stacy Wolf, Elizabeth L. Wollman, Bryan Vandevender and Kelly Kessler, brought together with a newly commissioned piece by Jordan Ealey. All set against the backdrop of Kelly Kessler’s scene-setting introduction.

Excellent potential for classroom and course use on undergraduate and graduate courses in theatre studies, musical studies, women’s and gender studies.

List of Figures
Acknowledgements
Introduction: Belting Away at Binaries – Kelly Kessler

PART 1: EXPLORING AND EXPLODING THE GENDER BINARY ON THE MUSICAL STAGE
1. The Radio City Rockettes and the Making of a Sisterhood – Adrienne Gibbons Oehlers
2. Billy Elliot the Musical: Visual Representations of Working-Class Masculinity and the All-Singing, All-Dancing Bo[d]y – George Rodosthenous
3. Hamilton’s Women – Stacy Wolf
4. Rewriting the American West: Black Feminist (Re)Vision in Bella: An American Tall Tale – Jordan Ealey
5. 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
6. Chorus Boys: Words, Music and Queerness (c.1900–36) – David Haldane Lawrence
7. Emancipation or Exploitation? Gender Liberation and Adult Musicals in 1970s New York – Elizabeth L. Wollman
8. A Substitute for Love: The Performance of Sex in Spring Awakening – Bryan M. Vandevender
9. 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
10. Embracing Excess: The Queer Feminist Power of Musical Theatre Diva Roles – Michelle Dvoskin
11. Stepping Out of Line: (Re)Claiming the Diva for the Dancers of Broadway – Dustyn Martincich
12. Diva Relations in The Color Purple, the 2015 Broadway Revival – Deborah Paredez
13. 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
14. The Queerness of Copla: Musical Hope for the Spanish LGBTQ – Alejandro Postigo
15. Queering Brechtian Feminism: Breaking Down Gender Binaries in Musical Theatre Pedagogical Performance Practices – Sherrill Gow
16. For Progress or Profit: The Possibilities and Limitations of Playing with Gender in Twenty-First-Century Musical Theatre – Stephanie Lim
17. The Right to See and Not Be Seen: South Korean Musicals and Young Feminist Activism – Jiyoon Jung

Notes on Contributors

'In addition to the articles published as part of Studies in Musical Theatre, Kessler has included five other articles in her book to include recent developments and shows: new pieces on Spanish musical theatre performance and fandom; historicity and musical stories told through black female authorship, gender-flipped; non binary; and trans narratives, and the negotiated marketing and queerness on Broadway”. [...] Kessler did a fabulous job and presented a technically well-founded book that is very readable. The "Studies in Musical Theater" [journal] itself is also highly recommended.'