Musical Theater And American Culture

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Musical Theater and American Culture

Author : David Walsh
Publisher : Praeger
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 222 pages
Book Rating : 4.F/5 ( download)

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Book Synopsis Musical Theater and American Culture by : David Walsh

Download or read book Musical Theater and American Culture written by David Walsh and published by Praeger. This book was released on 2003-10-30 with total page 222 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Though there have been many histories of the theater and specifically the theatrical musical, none has done quite what Musical Theater and American Culture achieves: it explores how the musical emerged in the late-18th and 19th centuries as a specifically American form of entertainment and went on to become a powerful medium of popular and political collective expression, articulating the tensions and reconciliations of everyday relations between individuals and society. Intimately related to the forging of social, cultural, and political American identities, the musical—often dismissed as merely entertainment—is tied inextricably to America's sense of itself as a New World, a land of opportunity, and above all, the emblem of modern culture. Including material on genres ranging from minstrel shows to melodrama to the development of the contemporary book musical and the megamusical, Musical Theater and American Culture delves into such important shows as Anything Goes, West Side Story, Evita, and Rent; it represents the first sustained analysis of this medium as a social and political vehicle. Authors David F. Walsh and Len Platt further consider how the current condition of the musical, the emergence of specialist musicals, revivals, and blockbuster musicals intended for a globalized audience relate both aesthetically and culturally to their Broadway progenitors. Tackling the much broader question of what the fragmentation of this popular culture now indicates about contemporary America, they forge a new and unique study sure to appeal to both scholars of the theater and fans of its ongoing and always -fascinating new forms.

Mormons, Musical Theater, and Belonging in America

Author : Jake Johnson
Publisher : University of Illinois Press
ISBN 13 : 025205136X
Total Pages : 224 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (52 download)

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Book Synopsis Mormons, Musical Theater, and Belonging in America by : Jake Johnson

Download or read book Mormons, Musical Theater, and Belonging in America written by Jake Johnson and published by University of Illinois Press. This book was released on 2019-06-30 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints adopted the vocal and theatrical traditions of American musical theater as important theological tenets. As Church membership grew, leaders saw how the genre could help define the faith and wove musical theater into many aspects of Mormon life. Jake Johnson merges the study of belonging in America with scholarship on voice and popular music to explore the surprising yet profound link between two quintessentially American institutions. Throughout the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, Mormons gravitated toward musicals as a common platform for transmitting political and theological ideas. Johnson sees Mormons using musical theater as a medium for theology of voice--a religious practice that suggests how vicariously voicing another person can bring one closer to godliness. This sounding, Johnson suggests, created new opportunities for living. Voice and the musical theater tradition provided a site for Mormons to negotiate their way into middle-class respectability. At the same time, musical theater became a unique expressive tool of Mormon culture.

Broadway [2 volumes]

Author : Thomas A. Greenfield
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN 13 : 0313342652
Total Pages : 838 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (133 download)

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Book Synopsis Broadway [2 volumes] by : Thomas A. Greenfield

Download or read book Broadway [2 volumes] written by Thomas A. Greenfield and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2009-12-23 with total page 838 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the most comprehensive and insightful reference available on Broadway theater as an American cultural phenomenon and an illuminator of American life. Broadway: An Encyclopedia of Theater and American Culture is the first major reference work to explore just how much the "Great White Way" illuminates our national character. In two volumes spanning the era from the mid-19th century to the present, it offers nearly 200 entries on a variety of topics, including spotlights on 30 landmark productions—from Shuffle Along to Oklahoma! to Oh Calcutta! to The Producers—that not only changed American theater but American culture as well. In addition, Broadway offers thirty extended thematic essays gauging the powerful impact of theater on American life, with entries on race relations, women in society, sexuality, film, media, technology, tourism, and off-Broadway and noncommercial theater. There are also 110 profile entries on key persons and institutions—from the famous to the infamous to the all but forgotten—whose unique careers and contributions impacted Broadway and its place in the American landscape.

Making Americans

Author : Andrea Most
Publisher : Belknap Press
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 280 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (91 download)

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Book Synopsis Making Americans by : Andrea Most

Download or read book Making Americans written by Andrea Most and published by Belknap Press. This book was released on 2004 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From 1925 to 1951--three chaotic decades of depression, war, and social upheaval--Jewish writers brought to the musical stage a powerfully appealing vision of America fashioned through song and dance. It was an optimistic, meritocratic, selectively inclusive America in which Jews could at once lose and find themselves--assimilation enacted onstage and off, as Andrea Most shows. This book examines two interwoven narratives crucial to an understanding of twentieth-century American culture: the stories of Jewish acculturation and of the development of the American musical. Here we delve into the work of the most influential artists of the genre during the years surrounding World War II--Irving Berlin, Eddie Cantor, Dorothy and Herbert Fields, George and Ira Gershwin, Oscar Hammerstein, Lorenz Hart, and Richard Rodgers--and encounter new interpretations of classics such as The Jazz Singer, Whoopee, Girl Crazy, Babes in Arms, Oklahoma!, Annie Get Your Gun, South Pacific, and The King and I. Most's analysis reveals how these brilliant composers, librettists, and performers transformed the experience of New York Jews into the grand, even sacred acts of being American. Read in the context of memoirs, correspondence, production designs, photographs, and newspaper clippings, the Broadway musical clearly emerges as a form by which Jewish artists negotiated their entrance into secular American society. In this book we see how the communities these musicals invented and the anthems they popularized constructed a vision of America that fostered self-understanding as the nation became a global power.

The American Musical and the Formation of National Identity

Author : Raymond Knapp
Publisher : Princeton University Press
ISBN 13 : 0691186200
Total Pages : 361 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (911 download)

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Book Synopsis The American Musical and the Formation of National Identity by : Raymond Knapp

Download or read book The American Musical and the Formation of National Identity written by Raymond Knapp and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2018-06-05 with total page 361 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The American musical has achieved and maintained relevance to more people in America than any other performance-based art. This thoughtful history of the genre, intended for readers of all stripes, offers probing discussions of how American musicals, especially through their musical numbers, advance themes related to American national identity. Written by a musicologist and supported by a wealth of illustrative audio examples (on the book's website), the book examines key historical antecedents to the musical, including the Gilbert and Sullivan operetta, nineteenth and early twentieth-century American burlesque and vaudeville, Tin Pan Alley, and other song types. It then proceeds thematically, focusing primarily on fifteen mainstream shows from the twentieth century, with discussions of such notable productions as Show Boat (1927), Porgy and Bess (1935), Oklahoma! (1943), West Side Story (1957), Hair (1967), Pacific Overtures (1976), and Assassins (1991). The shows are grouped according to their treatment of themes that include defining America, mythologies, counter-mythologies, race and ethnicity, dealing with World War II, and exoticism. Each chapter concludes with a brief consideration of available scholarship on related subjects; an extensive appendix provides information on each show discussed, including plot summaries and song lists, and a listing of important films, videos, audio recordings, published scores, and libretti associated with each musical.

Our Musicals, Ourselves

Author : John Bush Jones
Publisher : Brandeis University Press
ISBN 13 : 1611682231
Total Pages : 420 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (116 download)

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Book Synopsis Our Musicals, Ourselves by : John Bush Jones

Download or read book Our Musicals, Ourselves written by John Bush Jones and published by Brandeis University Press. This book was released on 2011-04-17 with total page 420 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Our Musicals, Ourselves is the first full-scale social history of the American musical theater from the imported Gilbert and Sullivan comic operas of the late nineteenth century to such recent musicals as The Producers and Urinetown. While many aficionados of the Broadway musical associate it with wonderful, diversionary shows like The Music Man or My Fair Lady, John Bush Jones instead selects musicals for their social relevance and the extent to which they engage, directly or metaphorically, contemporary politics and culture. Organized chronologically, with some liberties taken to keep together similarly themed musicals, Jones examines dozens of Broadway shows from the beginning of the twentieth century to the present that demonstrate numerous links between what played on Broadway and what played on newspapersÕ front pages across our nation. He reviews the productions, lyrics, staging, and casts from the lesser-known early musicals (the ÒgunboatÓ musicals of the Teddy Roosevelt era and the ÒCinderella showsÓ and Òleisure time musicalsÓ of the 1920s) and continues his analysis with better-known shows including Showboat, Porgy and Bess, Oklahoma, South Pacific, West Side Story, Cabaret, Hair, Company, A Chorus Line, and many others. While most examinations of the American musical focus on specific shows or emphasize the development of the musical as an art form, JonesÕs book uses musicals as a way of illuminating broader social and cultural themes of the times. With six appendixes detailing the long-running diversionary musicals and a foreword by Sheldon Harnick, the lyricist of Fiddler on the Roof, JonesÕs comprehensive social history will appeal to both students and fans of Broadway.

Performing America

Author : J. Ellen Gainor
Publisher : University of Michigan Press
ISBN 13 : 9780472087921
Total Pages : 260 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (879 download)

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Book Synopsis Performing America by : J. Ellen Gainor

Download or read book Performing America written by J. Ellen Gainor and published by University of Michigan Press. This book was released on 1999 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: DIVHow theatrical representations of the U.S. have shaped national identity /div

West Side Story

Author : Elizabeth A. Wells
Publisher : Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN 13 : 0810876663
Total Pages : 327 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (18 download)

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Book Synopsis West Side Story by : Elizabeth A. Wells

Download or read book West Side Story written by Elizabeth A. Wells and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2011 with total page 327 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Wells presents a scholarly study of the American musical West Side Story, viewing the work from cultural, historical, and musical perspectives. --from publisher description.

The Secret Life of the American Musical

Author : Jack Viertel
Publisher : Macmillan + ORM
ISBN 13 : 0374711259
Total Pages : 335 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (747 download)

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Book Synopsis The Secret Life of the American Musical by : Jack Viertel

Download or read book The Secret Life of the American Musical written by Jack Viertel and published by Macmillan + ORM. This book was released on 2016-03-01 with total page 335 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A New York Times Bestseller For almost a century, Americans have been losing their hearts and losing their minds in an insatiable love affair with the American musical. It often begins in childhood in a darkened theater, grows into something more serious for high school actors, and reaches its passionate zenith when it comes time for love, marriage, and children, who will start the cycle all over again. Americans love musicals. Americans invented musicals. Americans perfected musicals. But what, exactly, is a musical? In The Secret Life of the American Musical, Jack Viertel takes them apart, puts them back together, sings their praises, marvels at their unflagging inventiveness, and occasionally despairs over their more embarrassing shortcomings. In the process, he invites us to fall in love all over again by showing us how musicals happen, what makes them work, how they captivate audiences, and how one landmark show leads to the next—by design or by accident, by emulation or by rebellion—from Oklahoma! to Hamilton and onward. Structured like a musical, The Secret Life of the American Musical begins with an overture and concludes with a curtain call, with stops in between for “I Want” songs, “conditional” love songs, production numbers, star turns, and finales. The ultimate insider, Viertel has spent three decades on Broadway, working on dozens of shows old and new as a conceiver, producer, dramaturg, and general creative force; he has his own unique way of looking at the process and at the people who collaborate to make musicals a reality. He shows us patterns in the architecture of classic shows and charts the inevitable evolution that has taken place in musical theater as America itself has evolved socially and politically. The Secret Life of the American Musical makes you feel as though you’ve been there in the rehearsal room, in the front row of the theater, and in the working offices of theater owners and producers as they pursue their own love affair with that rare and elusive beast—the Broadway hit.

Miss Saigon (PVG)

Author : Wise Publications
Publisher : Wise Publications
ISBN 13 : 1783234326
Total Pages : 106 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (832 download)

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Book Synopsis Miss Saigon (PVG) by : Wise Publications

Download or read book Miss Saigon (PVG) written by Wise Publications and published by Wise Publications. This book was released on 2014-07-08 with total page 106 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Miss Saigon (PVG) presents 12 songs from Boublil & Schonberg’s hit musical, Miss Saigon. Each song has been freshly engraved for piano and voice, with accompanying lyrics, allowing you to relive the beauty and drama of the show. With beautiful and faithful transciptions, alongside full-colour photography, this book is an essential purchase for any fan. Songlist: - The Heat Is On In Saigon - The Movie In My Mind - Why God Why? - Sun And Moon - The Last Night Of The World - I Still Believe - I’d Give My Life For You - Bui-doi - What A Waste - Too Much For One Heart - Maybe - The American Dream

Broadway to Main Street

Author : Laurence Maslon
Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0190620412
Total Pages : 320 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (96 download)

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Book Synopsis Broadway to Main Street by : Laurence Maslon

Download or read book Broadway to Main Street written by Laurence Maslon and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2018-08-03 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The music of Broadway is one of America's most unique and popular calling cards. In Broadway to Main Street: How Show Tunes Enchanted America, author Laurence Maslon tells the story of how the most beloved songs of the American Musical Theater made their way from the Theater District to living rooms across the country. The crossroads where the music of Broadway meets popular culture is an expansive and pervasive juncture throughout most of the twentieth century--from sheet music to radio broadcasts to popular and original cast recordings--and continues to influence culture today through television, streaming, and the Internet. The original Broadway cast album--from the 78 rpm recording of Oklahoma! to the digital download of Hamilton--is one of the most successful, yet undervalued, genres in the history of popular recording. The challenge of capturing musical narrative with limited technology inspired the imagination of both the recording industry and millions of listeners: between 1949 and 1969, fifteen different original cast albums hit number one on the popular music charts, ultimately tallying more weeks at number one than all of the albums by Frank Sinatra, Elvis Presley, and The Beatles combined. The history of Broadway music is also the history of American popular music; the technological, commercial, and marketing forces of communications and media over the last century were inextricably bound up in the enterprise of bringing the musical gems of New York's Theater District to living rooms along Main Streets across the nation. Featuring new interviews with Stephen Schwartz, Chita Rivera, Steve Lawrence, and prominent record producers and music critics, the story of this commercial and emotional phenomenon is told here in full--from the imprimatur of sheet music from Broadway in the early 20th century to the renaissance of Broadway music in the digital age, folding in the immense impact of show music on American culture and in the context of the recording industry, popular tastes, and our shared national identity. A book which connects cherished cultural artifacts to the emotional narratives at the core of American popular music, Broadway to Main Street: How Show Tunes Enchanted America is an ideal companion for all fans of American musical theater and popular music.

Broadway [2 Volumes]

Author : Thomas A. Greenfield
Publisher : Greenwood
ISBN 13 : 0313342644
Total Pages : 0 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (133 download)

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Book Synopsis Broadway [2 Volumes] by : Thomas A. Greenfield

Download or read book Broadway [2 Volumes] written by Thomas A. Greenfield and published by Greenwood. This book was released on 2009-12-23 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In two volumes spanning the era from the mid-19th century to the present, this encyclopedia offers nearly 200 entries on a variety of topics, including spotlights on 30 landmark productions. Also 30 extended thematic essays gauging the impact of theater on American life. There are also 110 profile entries on key persons and institutions whose unique careers and contributions impacted Broadway.

American Musical Theater

Author : James Leve
Publisher : Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN 13 : 9780195379600
Total Pages : 0 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (796 download)

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Book Synopsis American Musical Theater by : James Leve

Download or read book American Musical Theater written by James Leve and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2016 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Oklahoma! and the integrated book musical -- Musical theater in nineteenth-century America -- Broadway at the turn of the century -- The teens -- The twenties -- The thirties -- The forties -- The fifties -- The sixties -- The seventies -- The eighties -- The nineties -- The new millennium -- Musical theater off Broadway -- The "black musical" -- Rock on Broadway -- The star.

When Broadway Was the Runway

Author : Marlis Schweitzer
Publisher : University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN 13 : 081222163X
Total Pages : 322 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (122 download)

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Book Synopsis When Broadway Was the Runway by : Marlis Schweitzer

Download or read book When Broadway Was the Runway written by Marlis Schweitzer and published by University of Pennsylvania Press. This book was released on 2009 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Selected by Choice magazine as an Outstanding Academic Title for 2009 When Broadway Was the Runway explores the central and largely unacknowledged role of commercial Broadway theater in the birth of modern American fashion and consumer culture. Long before Hollywood's red carpet spectacles, Broadway theater introduced American women to the latest styles. At the beginning of the twentieth century, theater impresarios captured the imagination of their largely female patrons by transforming the stage into a glorious site of consumer spectacle. Theater historian Marlis Schweitzer examines how these impresarios presented the dresses actresses wore onstage, as well as the jewelry and hairstyles they chose, as commodities that were available for purchase in nearby department stores and salons. The Merry Widow Hat, designed for the hit operetta of the same name, sparked an international craze, and the dancer Irene Castle became a fashion celebrity when she anticipated the flapper look of the 1920s by nearly a decade. Not only were the latest styles onstage, but advertisements appeared throughout theaters, in programs, and on the curtains, while magazines such as Vogue vied for the rights to publish theatrical costume sketches and Harper's Bazar enticed readers with photo spreads of actresses in couture. This combination of spectatorship and consumption was a crucial step in the formation of a mass market for consumer goods and the rise of the cult of celebrity. Through historical analysis and dozens of early photographs and illustrations, Schweitzer aims a spotlight at the cultural and economic convergence of the theater and fashion industries in the United States.

Stephen Sondheim and the Reinvention of the American Musical

Author : Robert L. McLaughlin
Publisher : Univ. Press of Mississippi
ISBN 13 : 1496808568
Total Pages : 322 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (968 download)

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Book Synopsis Stephen Sondheim and the Reinvention of the American Musical by : Robert L. McLaughlin

Download or read book Stephen Sondheim and the Reinvention of the American Musical written by Robert L. McLaughlin and published by Univ. Press of Mississippi. This book was released on 2016-08-11 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From West Side Story in 1957 to Road Show in 2008, the musicals of Stephen Sondheim and his collaborators have challenged the conventions of American musical theater and expanded the possibilities of what musical plays can do, how they work, and what they mean. Sondheim's brilliant array of work, including such musicals as Company, Follies, Sweeney Todd, Sunday in the Park with George, and Into the Woods, has established him as the preeminent composer/lyricist of his, if not all, time. Stephen Sondheim and the Reinvention of the American Musical places Sondheim's work in two contexts: the exhaustion of the musical play and the postmodernism that, by the 1960s, deeply influenced all the American arts. Sondheim's musicals are central to the transition from the Rodgers and Hammerstein-style musical that had dominated Broadway stages for twenty years to a new postmodern musical. This new style reclaimed many of the self-aware, performative techniques of the 1930s musical comedy to develop its themes of the breakdown of narrative knowledge and the fragmentation of identity. In his most recent work, Sondheim, who was famously mentored by Oscar Hammerstein II, stretches toward a twenty-first-century musical that seeks to break out of the self-referring web of language. Stephen Sondheim and the Reinvention of the American Musical offers close readings of all of Sondheim's musicals and finds in them critiques of the operation of power, questioning of conventional systems of knowledge, and explorations of contemporary identity.

Something Wonderful

Author : Todd S. Purdum
Publisher : Henry Holt
ISBN 13 : 162779834X
Total Pages : 400 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (277 download)

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Book Synopsis Something Wonderful by : Todd S. Purdum

Download or read book Something Wonderful written by Todd S. Purdum and published by Henry Holt. This book was released on 2018-04-03 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Even before they joined forces, Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II had written dozens of Broadway shows, but together they pioneered a new art form: the serious musical play. Their songs and dance numbers served to advance the drama and reveal character, a sharp break from the past and the template on which all future musicals would be built. [This is a portrait of that creative partnership]"--Amazon.com

The Oxford Handbook of The American Musical

Author : Raymond Knapp
Publisher : OUP USA
ISBN 13 : 0195385942
Total Pages : 482 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (953 download)

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Book Synopsis The Oxford Handbook of The American Musical by : Raymond Knapp

Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of The American Musical written by Raymond Knapp and published by OUP USA. This book was released on 2011-11-04 with total page 482 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Oxford Handbook of The American Musical offers new and cutting-edge essays on the most important and compelling issues and topics in the growing, interdisciplinary field of musical-theater and film-musical studies. Taking the form of a "keywords" book, it introduces readers to the concepts and terms that define the history of the musical as a genre and that offer ways to reflect on the specific creative choices that shape musicals and their performance on stage and screen. The handbook offers a cross-section of essays written by leading experts in the field, organized within broad conceptual groups, which together capture the breadth, direction, and tone of musicals studies today.Each essay traces the genealogy of the term or issue it addresses, including related issues and controversies, positions and problematizes those issues within larger bodies of scholarship, and provides specific examples drawn from shows and films. Essays both re-examine traditional topics and introduce underexplored areas. Reflecting the concerns of scholars and students alike, the authors emphasize critical and accessible perspectives, and supplement theory with concrete examples that may be accessed through links to the handbook's website.Taking into account issues of composition, performance, and reception, the book's contributors bring a wide range of practical and theoretical perspectives to bear on their considerations of one of America's most lively, enduring artistic traditions. The Oxford Handbook of The American Musical will engage all readers interested in the form, from students to scholars to fans and aficionados, as it analyses the complex relationships among the creators, performers, and audiences who sustain the genre.