Broadway was one of the first forms of entertainment. Before there were television programs, or movies, there was Broadway. Broadway originated in New York in 1750, when actor-manager Walter Murray built a theatre company at the Theatre on Nassau Street. A musical would show about once every weekend. The shows were very male based, and would commonly show a relationship between young boys and their fathers. Women were slowly integrated into Broadway, and as society changed its point of view on women, so did theatre.
The first strictly female-based shows were released in the 1950’s. These musicals attracted more female-based audience members and ticket sales rose exponentially. Musicals such as The Sound of Music and My Fair Lady showed how women were an important part of life, whereas musicals such as Spring Awakening, Aida, and Wicked showed extreme women empowerment. Gender inflicts and shapes every aspect of the musical. ”Gender is a constitutive element of Broadway musical theatre, fundamental to the musical’s architecture, and as vital a building block as music, lyrics, orchestration, spoken text, choreography, and dance, lights, sets, costumes, and props. It shows from the very beginning the role to be played” (Wolf, p.6)
As soon as an actor steps foot onto the stage, the audience sees the actor’s gender and interprets that character accordingly. The character of Maria Rainer in Rogers and Hammerstein’s The Sound of Music isn’t just a high on life happy person singing about the Austrian mountains and the joy they bring her; she’s a young postulant nun who is unsure of her future. In Maria’s first encounter with Captain Von Trapp, he is a stern man walking around his living room in frustration. How the character of Maria g...
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"Https://www.academia.edu/748189/_Consuming_Little_Girls_How_Broadway_and_New_York_City_Capitalized_on_Peggy_Sawyer_and_Little_Orphan_Annies_Big_Apple_Dreams_." Journal of American Drama and Theatre 21.2 (2009): 67-87. Print.
"Wicked - Broadway." Broadway.com. N.p., 12 Oct. 2006. Web. 15 Dec. 2013.
Wolf, Stacy Ellen. Changed for Good: A Feminist History of the Broadway Musical. New York: Oxford UP, 2011. Print.
Pollard, Laura.
"Https://www.academia.edu/748189/_Consuming_Little_Girls_How_Broadway_and_New_York_City_Capitalized_on_Peggy_Sawyer_and_Little_Orphan_Annies_Big_Apple_Dreams_." Journal of American Drama and Theatre 21.2 (2009): 67-87. Print.
"Wicked - Broadway." Broadway.com. N.p., 12 Oct. 2006. Web. 15 Dec. 2013.
Wolf, Stacy Ellen. Changed for Good: A Feminist History of the Broadway Musical. New York: Oxford UP, 2011. Print.
Gill, Glenda Eloise. No Surrender! No Retreat! : African American Pioneer Performers of Twentieth-Century American Theater. New York: St. Martin's, 2000. Print.
Pellegrini, Ann. “The Plays of Paula Vogel.” A Companion to Twentieth-Century American Drama. Ed. David Krasner. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2005. 473-84.
Kislan, Richard. The Musical: A Look at the American Musical Theater. New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1980. 84, 110, 116-121, 125-127, 128, 134, 163, 195, 201, 209. Print.
The play Twelfth Night, or What You Will by William Shakespeare is a 1601 comedy that has proven to be the source of experimentation in gender casting in the early twenty-first century due to its portrayal of gender in love and identity. The play centrally revolves around the love triangle between Orsino, Olivia, and Viola. However, Olivia and Orsino both believe Viola is a boy named Cesario. Ironically, only male actors were on the stage in Shakespeare’s time. This means that Olivia, Viola, and other female characters were played by young boys who still had voices at higher pitches than older males.
Butler, Judith. "Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay in Phenomenology and Feminist Theory." Theatre Journal 40.4 (1988): 519-31. The Johns Hopkins University Press. Web. 11 May 2011.
Throughout the plays, the reader can visualize how men dismiss women as trivial and treat them like property, even though the lifestyles they are living in are very much in contrast. The playwrights, each in their own way, are addressing the issues that have negatively impacted the identity of women in society.
Dash, Irene. Wooing, Wedding, and Power: Women in Shakespeare’s Plays. New York: Columbia University Press, 1981.
Butler, Judith. Ed. Case, Sue-Ellen. "Performative Acts and Gender Constitution." Performing Feminisms: Feminist Critical Theory and Theatre. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990.
Susan Glaspell uses literary elements that show the readers the feminist theme in the play. The use of characters in this play really shows the feminist theme the most. Men in this play clearly demonstrates how men wer...
Wells, E A. (2011) West Side Story Cultural Perspectives on an American musical. Maryland: Scarecrow Press, Inc.
Kenrick, John. Musical Theatre A History. New York: The Continuum International Publishing Group, 2008. Print.
As in all genres, the musicals have had its share of failures. Some worthy dramas have been pressed into service and musicalized and sometimes butchered in the process, and audiences have had to watch a fine play diluted into a mediocre musical. But the successes have been many and spectacular and they have left a long lasting effect on the American art and culture.
Lindheim, Nancy "Rethinking Sexuality and Class in Twelfth Night." University of Toronto Quarterly: A Canadian Journal of the Humanities 76.2 (2007): 679-713. MLA International Bibliography. EBSCO. Web. 6 Nov. 2009.
Theatre has heavily evolved over the past 100 years, particularly Musical Theatre- a subgenre of theatre in which the storyline is conveyed relying on songs and lyrics rather than dialogue. From its origination in Athens, musical theatre has spread across the world and is a popular form of entertainment today. This essay will discuss the evolution and change of musical theatre from 1980-2016, primarily focusing on Broadway (New York) and the West End (London). It will consider in depth, the time periods of: The 1980s: “Brit Hits”- the influence of European mega musicals, the 1990s: “The downfall of musicals”- what failed and what redeemed, and the 2000s/2010s: “The Resurgence of musicals”- including the rise of pop and movie musicals. Concluding
Smith, Rebecca. The Woman’s Part: Feminist Criticism of Shakespeare. Champaign, IL: U of Illinois P, 1983