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Broadway Bodies: A Critical History of Conformity

Donovan, Ryan

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Paperback

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Broadway has body issues.

What is a Broadway Body? Broadway has long preserved the ideology of the "Broadway Body" the hyper-fit, exceptionally able, triple-threat performer who represents how Broadway musicals favor certain kinds of bodies. Casting is always a political act, situated within a power structure that gives preference to the Broadway Body.

In Broadway Bodies, author Ryan Donovan explores how ability, sexuality, and size intersect with gender, race, and ethnicity in casting and performance. To understand these intersectional relationships, he poses a series of questions: Why did A Chorus Line, a show that sought to individuate dancers, inevitably make dancers indistinguishable? How does the use of fat suits in musicals like Dreamgirls and Hairspray stigmatize fatness? What were the political implications of casting two straight actors as the gay couple in La Cage aux Folles in 1983? How did deaf actors change the sound of musicals in Deaf West's Broadway revivals? Whose bodies does Broadway cast and whose does it cast aside?

In answering these questions, Broadway Bodies tells a history of Broadway's inclusion of various forms of embodied difference while revealing its simultaneous ambivalence toward non-conforming bodies.

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No Accessory

Publisher

OXFORD UNIV PR

Bisac Major Subject

Performing Arts

Bisac Minor Subject

Acting & Auditioning

Binding Type

Paperback

Country Of Origin

Number Of Units

Length

9.27 Inches

Barcode Indicator

EAN

Width

6.13 Inches

Publication Date

1970-01-01

Height

0.88 Inches

ISBN 10

0197551084

Weight

1.01 Pounds

Book EAN

9780197551080

Target Audiance

Adults

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Broadway Bodies: A Critical History of Conformity