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The Oxford Handbook of the Global Stage Musical

Online ISBN:
9780190909765
Print ISBN:
9780190909734
Publisher:
Oxford University Press
Book

The Oxford Handbook of the Global Stage Musical

Robert Gordon (ed.),
Robert Gordon
(ed.)
Pinter Centre for Performance and Creative Writing, Goldsmiths, University of London
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Robert Gordon is Professor of Theatre and the director of the Pinter Centre for Performance and Creative Writing at Goldsmiths, University of London, where in 2003 he introduced the first European masters degree in musical theatre for producers and writers. He is author of The Purpose of Playing: Modern Acting Theory in Perspective (University of Michigan Press, 2006), Harold Pinter’s Theatre of Power (University of Michigan Press, 2012), and, with Olaf Jubin and Millie Taylor, British Musical Theatre since 1950 (Bloomsbury, 2016). Edited collections include The Oxford Handbook of Sondheim Studies (Oxford University Press, 2014) and, with Olaf Jubin, The Oxford Handbook of the British Musical (Oxford University Press, 2016). His monograph The Theatre of Kander and Ebb (Methuen) will be in print in March 2024. Robert has worked internationally as an actor, director, and playwright and is author of Red Earth (1985) and Waterloo Road (Young Vic Theatre, 1987). In 2012 he devised and co-directed Pinter: In Other Rooms for a tour of Eastern Europe and directed the European première of Kander and Ebb’s Steel Pier at Na Zabradli in Brno, while his musical with Nick Hutson, Five Children and It, received a professional workshop performance in 2015. He is currently engaged as a writer and actor in Shylock Speaks, which premiered in February 2020, and in 2018 he introduced a bachelor of arts in musical theatre programme at Goldsmiths.

Olaf Jubin (ed.)
Olaf Jubin
(ed.)
Media Studies, Regent’s University
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Olaf Jubin is currently the primary researcher on a four-year project funded by FWF (Austria) at the University of Salzburg on how musicals represent European history. He also is an associate lecturer in the bachelor’s and master’s of arts programmes in musical theatre at Goldsmiths, University of London. For seventeen years he worked at Regent’s University London, where he was a professor of musical theatre and media studies. He earned his PhD from the Ruhr-Universität Bochum, Germany, and has written and co-edited several books on the mass media and musical theatre, including a study of the German dubbing and subtitling of Hollywood musicals and a comparative analysis of reviews of the musicals of Stephen Sondheim and Andrew Lloyd Webber. He is co-author of British Musical Theatre since 1950 (Bloomsbury, 2016) and co-editor of The Oxford Handbook of the British Musical (Oxford University Press, 2016). In 2017 his monograph on Into the Woods appeared as part of the Routledge Fourth Wall series. He recently edited Paris and the Musical: The City of Light on Stage and Screen (Routledge, 2021) and is preparing a book on the dramaturgy and lyrics of Tim Rice. https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0200-9813.

Published online:
23 October 2023
Published in print:
30 November 2023
Online ISBN:
9780190909765
Print ISBN:
9780190909734
Publisher:
Oxford University Press

Abstract

The stage musical constitutes a major industry not only in the United States and the United Kingdom, but in many regions of the world. Over the last four decades many countries have developed their own musical theatre industries, not only by importing hit shows from Broadway and London but also by establishing or reviving local traditions of musical theatre. In response to the rapid growth of musical theatre as a global phenomenon, The Oxford Handbook of the Global Stage Musical presents new scholarly approaches to issues arising from these new international markets. The volume examines the stage musical from a variety of theoretical and empirical perspectives, including concepts of globalisation and consumer culture, performance and musicological analysis, historical and cultural studies, media studies, notions of interculturalism and hybridity, gender studies, and international politics. The thirty-three essays investigate major aspects of the global musical, such as the dominance of Western colonialism in its early production and dissemination, racism, and sexism—both in representation and in the industry itself—and current conflicts between global and local interests in postmodern cultures. Featuring contributors from seventeen countries, the essays offer informed insider perspectives that reflect the diversity of the subject and offer in-depth examinations of specific cultural and economic systems. Together, they conduct a penetrating comparative analysis of musical theatre in different contexts as well as a survey of the transcultural spread of musicals.

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