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Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University's objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide.

Print Price: $30.95

Format:
Paperback
320 pp.
30 photographs, 6.125" x 9.25"

ISBN-13:
9780195378245

Publication date:
June 2011

Imprint: OUP US


Changed for Good

A Feminist History of the Broadway Musical

Stacy Wolf

From Adelaide in "Guys and Dolls" to Nina in "In the Heights" and Elphaba in "Wicked," female characters in Broadway musicals have belted and crooned their way into the American psyche. In this lively book, Stacy Wolf illuminates the women of American musical theatre - performers, creators, and characters - from the start of the cold war to the present day, creating a new, feminist history of the genre.

Moving from decade to decade, Wolf first highlights the assumptions that circulated about gender and sexuality at the time. She then looks at the leading musicals to stress the key aspects of the plays as they relate to women, and often finds overlooked moments of empowerment for female audience members. The musicals discussed here are among the most beloved in the canon - "West Side Story," "Cabaret," "A Chorus Line," "Phantom of the Opera," and many others - with special emphasis on the blockbuster "Wicked." Along the way, Wolf demonstrates how the musical since the mid-1940s has actually been dominated by women - women onstage, women in the wings, and women offstage as spectators and fans.

Readership : This book will be eagerly read by sophisticated fans of musical theater; female fans of musical theater; female or feminist musical theater artists; students and scholars in musical theater studies, women's studies, popular culture studies, American studies, and performance studies; and gay men who are inveterate fans of the musical.

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Stacy Wolf is Associate Professor of Theater and Director of the Princeton Atelier, Lewis Center for the Arts at Princeton University.

Making Sense - Margot Northey and Joan McKibbin

Special Features

  • The first feminist history of the Broadway musical.
  • Fully up-to-date with extensive discussion of "Wicked," "In the Heights," and "Glee".
  • Covers the most loved and well-known musicals on the American stage, from West Side Story to Wicked.