The Routledge Companion to the Contemporary Musical (Routledge Music Companions)

Synopsis

The Routledge Companion to the Contemporary Musical is dedicated to the musical’s evolving relationship to American culture in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. In the past decade-and-a-half, international scholars from an ever-widening number of disciplines and specializations have been actively contributing to the interdisciplinary field of musical theater studies. Musicals have served not only to mirror the sociopolitical, economic, and cultural tenor of the times, but have helped shape and influence it, in America and across the globe: a genre that may seem, at first glance, light-hearted and escapist serves also as a bold commentary on society. Forty-four essays examine the contemporary musical as an ever-shifting product of an ever-changing culture. This volume sheds new light on the American musical as a thriving, contemporary performing arts genre, one that could have died out in the post-Tin Pan Alley era but instead has managed to remain culturally viable and influential, in part by newly embracing a series of complex contradictions. At present, the American musical is a live, localized, old-fashioned genre that has simultaneously developed into an increasingly globalized, tech-savvy, intensely mediated mass entertainment form. Similarly, as it has become increasingly international in its scope and appeal, the stage musical has also become more firmly rooted to Broadway—the idea, if not the place—and thus branded as a quintessentially American entertainment.

Copyright:

2020

Book Details

Book Quality:

Publisher Quality

ISBN-13:

9781134851850

Related ISBNs:

9781315543703, 9781138684614, 9781138684614

Publisher:

Taylor and Francis

Date of Addition:

01/01/20

Copyrighted By:

Taylor

Adult content:

No

Language:

English

Has Image Descriptions:

No

Categories:

Nonfiction, Drama, Plays and Theater, Music

Submitted By:

Bookshare Staff

Usage Restrictions:

This is a copyrighted book.

Edited by:

Jessica Sternfeld

Edited by:

Elizabeth L. Wollman