Broadway Bodies: A Critical History of Conformity

Broadway has long favored the Broadway Body, a hyper-fit, triple-threat performer, but in Broadway Bodies, author Ryan Donovan explores how ability, sexuality, and size intersect with gender, race, and ethnicity in casting and performance. He asks why A Chorus Line made dancers indistinguishable, how fat suits stigmatize fatness, and how deaf actors changed the sound of musicals.

Format: Hardback
Length: 328 pages
Publication date: 13 April 2023
Publisher: Oxford University Press Inc

Broadway has a history of perpetuating the concept of the "Broadway Body," which refers to the idealized, hyper-fit, and exceptionally skilled performer who is favored by Broadway musicals. Casting in the Broadway industry is a political act that operates within a power structure that prioritizes the Broadway Body. In his book "Broadway Bodies," author Ryan Donovan delves into how ability, sexuality, and size intersect with gender, race, and ethnicity in casting and performance. Donovan raises several thought-provoking questions to explore these intersectional relationships. For instance, why did the show "A Chorus Line," which aimed to showcase individual dancers, ultimately result in indistinguishable performances? How does the use of fat suits in musicals like "Dreamgirls" and "Hairspray" perpetuate stigmatization of fatness? What were the political implications of casting two straight actors as the gay couple in "La Cage aux Folles" in 1983? How did deaf actors redefine the sound of musicals in Deaf West's Broadway revivals? Additionally, Donovan examines who is cast in Broadway productions and who is excluded, shedding light on the industry's ambivalence towards non-conforming bodies. Through his comprehensive analysis, "Broadway Bodies" provides a historical account of Broadway's inclusion of various forms of embodied difference while simultaneously revealing its simultaneous resistance to non-conforming bodies.

Weight: 618g
Dimension: 162 x 244 x 26 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9780197551073