Description
Book SynopsisBroadway Bodies offers a new telling of Broadway history, exploring how ability, sexuality, and size intersect with gender, race, and ethnicity in casting and performance. Author Ryan Donovan unpacks Broadway's inclusion of various forms of embodied difference while exposing its simultaneous ambivalence toward non-conforming bodies.
Trade ReviewSkillfully written in sharp, crystalline prose, the book comprises three case studies, each taking a deep dive into a musical whose casting demonstrates a particular type of body bias, then explicating that bias in a follow up chapter via other relevant shows. * Lisa Jo Sagolla, American Theatre *
Ryan Donovan's fascinating and groundbreaking book explores what Broadway musical theatre hides in plain sight: bodies on stage and the politics of casting some bodies and not others. Through impeccable historical research, probing interviews, incisive performance analysis, and vivid firsthand experience, Donovan offers a new history of Broadway musicals that shines a light on the industry's troubling and often shocking casting practices. This essential-reading volume unearths how size, ability, and sexuality delimit the 'Broadway body' and mask casting's misogyny, racism, ableism, and fat phobia. * Stacy Wolf, Princeton University *
Ryan Donovan's book immediately shifts the conversation on how we talk about musical theatre. Broadway Bodies is deeply knowledgeable, politically astute, and highly readable. I loved the book's clarity and purpose—this is a must-read for theatre and performance scholars and for anyone who cares about American theatre. * David Roman, University of Southern California *
Broadway Bodies is a wake-up call for anyone interested in equity. It requires that we ponder what it is about ourselves that we really want our American musical theatre to reflect. * Lisa Jo Sagolla, American Theatre *
Broadway Bodies, while eminently readable, is dense with sociopolitical context, historical research, and data surrounding casting practices. For those who study bodies in representation, specifically in the context of performance, this volume is a welcome contribution and is certain to serve as an anchor in this growing field. * Jennifer-Scott Mobley, Fat Studies *
Donovan's well-analyzed arguments on unresolved problems of access and his profound understanding of the form lead the way. This treatise has much to offer and raises the prospect of a similar examination of nonmusical theater forms. * Choice *
Table of ContentsPart I: Broadway Bodies Introduction: The Broadway Body 1. "I Saw What They Were Hiring": Casting and Recasting A Chorus Line Part II: Size 2. Dreamgirls, Size, and the Body Politics of Padding 3. "Must Be Heavyset": Casting Fat Women in Broadway Musicals Part III: Sexuality 4. La Cage aux Folles and Playing Gay 5. "Keeping It Gay" on The Great White Way Part IV: Ability 6. Deaf West's Awakening of Broadway 7. Musicals, Physical Difference, and Disability Epilogue: Recasting Broadway Bibliography Index
