Laura MacDonald is Assistant Professor in the Residential College in the Arts and Humanities at Michigan State University. With William A. Everett, she edited The Palgrave Handbook of Musical Theatre Producers (2017). She writes about long-running musicals on Broadway, in Europe, and in East Asia.

Ryan Donovan is Assistant Professor of Theater Studies at Duke University. He is the author of Broadway Bodies: A Critical History of Conformity (Oxford) and Queer Approaches in Musical Theatre (Bloomsbury), and he co-edited the special issue of Studies in Musical Theatre on musical theatre dance.

Foreword

Diane Paulus

Part 1: What

Introduction: On Musicals

San Bao

1. Musical Theater Mobilities: Around the World in Eighty Years

David Savran

2. An American in Tokyo? Musical Theatre Dance's Transnational Movements

Ryan Donovan

3. "How a World Can Seem So Vast": The Craft of Musical Theatre Dramaturgy

Lindsey R. Barr and Laura MacDonald

4. The Singing Voice

Masi Asare

5. "The Song Is You": Song Types and Genres in Musical Theatre

William A. Everett

Part 2: When

Introduction: Dark Primal Energy, Ancestor Memory, and American Exceptionalism

André De Shields with Kenneth J. Cerniglia

6. From Ballad Opera to Minstrelsy and Back: Social Class, Race, and Gender on the North American Musical Stage

Kristin Moriah

7. From the 1870s through World War I: The Spectre and Spectacle of the Human Body

Maya Cantu

8. Boom to Bust: Genre Borders, Color Lines, and Women Stars in the Musical between the World Wars

Todd Decker

9. World War II and the Cold War: Reflections and Refractions of Ourselves, Then and Now

Dominic McHugh

10. Since the 1980s: The Global Musical Theatre Ecology

Kelsey Blair

Part 3: Who

Introduction: Who Makes a Musical?

Georgia Stitt

11. Musical Theatre Training in the Twenty-First Century: A Primer

Amy S. Osatinski and Bud Coleman

12. "Forget About the Boy": Women and Creative Collaborations in Musical Theatre

Arianne Johnson Quinn and Clare Chandler

13. Good Gals Wear Black: Offstage Labor and the Musical

Christine Snyder

14. Mediated Taste: The Role of Critics

Paul R. Laird

15. From Stage Door to Cyberspace: The Digital Evolution of Musical Theatre Fandom

Adam Rush and Stephanie Lim

Part 4: How

Introduction: How Musicals Work: A Press Representative's View

Chris Boneau

16. Fitting the Slipper: The Art of Adaptation for the Musical Stage

William A. Everett

17. Harnessing Technology: The Evolving Labor of Design in Musical Theatre

Virginia Anderson

18. Humming the Scenery: The Aesthetics of Musical Theatre Spectacle

Douglas L. Reside

19. "That's Showbiz, Kid": Casting as Process and Product

Ryan Donovan

20. The Foundation, Function, and Future of the Musical Theatre Director

Mary Jo Lodge and Anne Healy

21. How Dancers and Choreographers Work: The Laboring Bodies of Musical Theatre

Joanna Dee Das

22. "The Name on Everybody's Lips": Marketing Musical Theatre

Laura MacDonald

23. A Critical Guide to Code-Meshing, Multilingualism, and Musicals

Samuel Yates

Part 5: Where

Introduction: Scenes from a Showbiz Couple's Travelogue

Kim Varhola

24. Centers of Musical Theatre

Alex Bádue, Jennifer C.H.J. Wilson, Laura Milburn, Leesi Patrick, and Sir Anril P. Tiatco

25. Pilots and Petticoats: Original Musicals in Continental Europe

Jeroen van Wijhe and Jacek Miköajczyk

26. The Broadway-Style Musical in/and Global Asias: 1920-2019

Sissi Liu and Rina Tanaka

27. "One of the best ways to please the locals is to go to New York": US American Regional Theatres and New Musical Theatre Development

Claudia Wilsch Case

28. "We're All in This Together": Student and Amateur Performances

Kenneth J. Cerniglia

29. Mediated Musical Theatre

Sam O'Connell

Part 6: Why

Introduction: Into the Theatre

Yilun (Della) Wu

30. Journeys to the Past: The Uses of Memory and Nostalgia in Musical Theatre

Bryan M. Vandevender

31. What's in a Name? The Multiplicities of the Musical

John Koegel

32. Interrogating America's National Myth Onstage: Case Studies on the Individual and the Community in U.S. Musical Theatre

Katie Welsh and Stacy Wolf

33. Translating Race in Musical Theatre

Ji Hon (Kayla) Yuh and Emilio Méndez Rios

34. "Art Isn't Easy" (and Neither is Commerce): The Musical Stays in the Money

Michael Schwartz

35. "World"-Traveling, Diversity, Inclusion, and the Making of Musicals in the Twenty-First Century

Trevor Boffone