Routledge Companion to the Contemporary Musical

<p><em>The Routledge Companion to the Contemporary Musical </em>is dedicated to the musical’s evolving relationship to American culture in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. In the past decade-and-a-half international scholars from an ever-widening number of disciplines and specializations have been actively contributing to the interdisciplinary field of musical theater studies. Musicals have served not only to mirror the sociopolitical economic and cultural tenor of the times but have helped shape and influence it in America and across the globe: a genre that may seem at first glance light-hearted and escapist serves also as a bold commentary on society.</p><p>Forty-four essays examine the contemporary musical as an ever-shifting product of an ever-changing culture. This volume sheds new light on the American musical as a thriving contemporary performing arts genre one that could have died out in the post-Tin Pan Alley era but instead has managed to remain culturally viable and influential in part by newly embracing a series of complex contradictions. At present the American musical is a live localized old-fashioned genre that has simultaneously developed into an increasingly globalized tech-savvy intensely mediated mass entertainment form. Similarly as it has become increasingly international in its scope and appeal the stage musical has also become more firmly rooted to Broadway—the idea if not the place—and thus branded as a quintessentially American entertainment. </p>