Oz and the Musical: Performing the American Fairy Tale - by Ryan Bunch

"The Wonderful Wizard of Oz" (1900) by Frank L. Baum has served as the basis for some of the most popular musicals on stage and screen. Show by show, Bunch highlights the forms and conventions of musical work as practiced in its time and context–such as the turn-of-the-century extravaganza, the classical Hollywood film musical, the Black Broadway musical of the 1970s, and the twenty-first-century mega-musical. He then shows how the journey of each show teaches participants and audiences something about how to act American within contested frameworks of race, gender, sexuality, age, and embodiment. Also explores home theatricals, make-believe play, school musicals, Oz-themed environments, and community events as sites where the performance of the American fairy tale brings home and utopia into contact through the conventions of the musical. 232 pages.

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Publisher: Oxford Univ Press

Released: 2022