The Musical is an Outcast Art Form

As research for my University of Washington School of Drama course THE BROADWAY MUSICAL – HOW IMMIGRANTS, JEWS, QUEERS, AND AFRICAN-AMERICANS INVENTED AMERICA’S SIGNATURE ART-FORM, I compiled a list of the 350 most significant and influential writers, composers, directors, choreographers, and producers throughout the Broadway Musical’s 120ish year history.

I find it stunning to note that only 36 of the individuals on this list can be classified as straight, WASP males. That is barely over 10%. The other 90% were Immigrants, Jews, Queers, African-Americans, and Women -- and many are members of more than one of those disenfranchised groups. This demonstrates that the American Musical is truly, and overwhelmingly, an outcast art form. Marginalized people created, and still sustain the Broadway Musical, even as it has been a centerpiece of mainstream American culture for more than a century.

What these marginalized people created was something totally new. A popular, democratic kind of music-theater that -- like most great American inventions -- was inspired by both a strong desire to express oneself, and a strong necessity to put food on the table. The concept of “the melting pot” has lost favor with some historians, but it remains a very apt description of how various multi-cultural artistic traditions blended together to create the American musical.

The Broadway Musical is often seen as one of the most middle-of-the-road, middle-class, and middlebrow of art forms. However, I would suggest that these observers have failed to see beneath the musical’s slick, polished and very entertaining surface. Underneath, musicals are actually very subversive.

When I tell people that the principal subject matter of the Broadway musical – its most common central theme – is racial prejudice and social justice, they are often surprised and skeptical. However, there is no doubt that this is the case. I can count 37 hit musicals with issues of race at the center of their story. This is clearly because the creators of the musical have almost always been from disenfranchised groups themselves.

Did Leonard Bernstein, Stephen Sondheim and Jerome Robbins, the three great Jewish and queer creators of West Side Story wake up one day and say “we’re gay and Jewish, and we feel oppressed so we are going to write a musical that will be a metaphor for the prejudice and alienation we experience in this society?” Of course, not. But when they decided to create a contemporary retelling of Romeo And Juliet they could not help but bring their thoughts, their feelings, their emotions, their life experience, and their humanity to the work. That is what great writers, directors and choreographers do. Their story of rival gangs and cultures inspired them to write a song about a love that “dare not speak its name” whose lyric begins:

“There’s a place for us

Somewhere a place for us

Peace and quiet and open air

wait for us somewhere.”

This song transcends the specific situation of the show and echoes the desire of everyone who to yearns to live fully and openly within their society. That is what musicals do.

You Can't Stop HAIRSPRAY!

This past weekend I had the great pleasure of seeing five plays in three days at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in Ashland, Oregon. In addition to three really excellent new plays, and a lackluster production of All’s Well That Ends Well, it was a wonderful treat to also have a chance to revisit an old friend: HAIRSPRAY – The Musical.

Original 5th Avenue Theatre and Broadway logo

It was exactly 20 years ago this summer that HAIRSPRAY had its world premiere at The 5th Avenue Theatre, and shortly thereafter opened on Broadway where it quickly established itself as a monster hit, and a modern classic. Seeing it again at OSF reminded me of how brilliantly written and perfectly crafted this show is. Like the greatest of musicals, HAIRSPRAY plays wonderfully in nearly any production, from high school to Broadway. I don’t mean to imply that OSF production was not good. The principal cast was fantastic, and on a par with the best Broadway and touring cast members. Katy Geraghty and Daniel T. Parker were superb as Tracy and Edna, and David Kelley and Jonathan Luke Stevens were wonderful as Wilber and Link.

However, no doubt due to the limitations of a true repertory theater company, the size of the cast and band was greatly reduced and that compromised some of the musical and choreographic impact of the show. It was especially unfortunate that there were not enough African-American performers to provide the balance the story and staging needs and deserves.

However, even with these limited resources the show was still tremendously funny, involving, dynamic, and ultimately moving. And it received pretty much the same reaction from the audience as the show did on the most exciting night that I have ever spent in a theater: the first preview of HAIRSPRAY in Seattle!

At that first ever performance the audience, who of course had no idea what expect, screamed with joy at the end of the opening number, “Good Morning Baltimore”, and then screamed in a similar way after every song that followed. This reached a climax with the staggering ovation for “I Know Where I’ve Been”. I remember thinking that there was no way to top that reaction, and I worried that the rest of the show would be an anti-climax. Then, remarkably, the audience went even crazier for the finale, “You Can’t Stop The Beat”.

The second preview at The 5th received a similar reaction, and then some! That night we had nearly 1000 members and friends of the Seattle Men’s Chorus in attendance and they loved the show so much that following the final curtain call, they and the rest of the crowd refused to leave the theater until Harvey Firestein came back for one more bow. They stood, cheered and kept applauding for a full 8 minutes (it seemed like forever). Then Harvey, who had made it all the way to his dressing room, finally returned to the stage dressed in a robe and wig cap. If you thought that similar scene in FOSSE/VERDON was hard to believe, I am here to tell you that it can and has happened – and no one who was there that night will forget it!

Kat Ramsburg and Company in the 10th Anniversary Concert at The 5th Avenue Theatre

It was only fitting that ten years later The 5th Avenue Theatre and Seattle Men’s Chorus joined forces to produce a 10th Anniversary Concert production of HAIRSPRAY featuring 300 members of the chorus now onstage, and a terrific all-star Seattle cast including Jinx Monsoon as Velma. This was the first and, to my knowledge, only time that Velma has been played as a drag role, and it really worked. In a strange way it made Velma a more important character, and really ramped up the rivalry between her and Edna. Jinx was by far the best Velma I have ever seen.

I could not be more proud to be associated with this brilliant show. HAIRSPRAY epitomizes the high level of artistry that Broadway Musicals can achieve, and the power and influence they can have on our culture.

In the great tradition of the Broadway Musical, HAIRSPRAY tells a story of marginalized people rising up from oppression to challenge the status quo, and changing the world in the process. That it can accomplish all that through the employment of hilarious jokes, characters, and situations; tuneful, captivating music and lyrics; and a spectacularly entertaining dance driven narrative is what makes this show so brilliant and impactful.

Happy birthday HAIRSPRAY -- It was thrilling to be there on the days you first came into the world!

10th Anniversary Concert of the Broadway musical HAIRSPRAY produced by The 5th Avenue Theatre and Seattle Men's Chorus, June 2013.

The Prince Of Broadway

The Broadway Musical lost one of its greatest and most significant creators today. Harold Prince is absolutely one of the two or three most significant individuals in the history of the Broadway musical. More personally, his work and vision had a tremendous impact on my aesthetic and artistic sensibilities. On my first trip to NYC, when I was 15, I saw his groundbreaking, immersive revisal of CANDIDE. Everything that Rachel Chavkin got so much acclaim for doing with The Great Comet, Prince did in 1973, and much more effectively.

You can read his full bio in the attached obituary https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/31/theater/hal-prince-dead.html but here are just a few key points that stand out to me:

Harold Prince was born in 1928 in New York City and like so many inventors of the Broadway Musical he came from an immigrant family. His adopted father was the child of Polish-Jewish immigrants, his mother was from a Jewish-Canadian family. At an early age, he was taken to Broadway shows by his theater-loving parents, and there he discovered a lifelong calling. Graduating from the University of Pennsylvania at age 19, Prince returned to New York determined to find a way to break into the theater.

As a perfect example of our handed-down, one-artist-to-the-next craft and art-form, Prince soon started working for the great director/producer George Abbott first as an Assistant Stage Manager and quickly working his way up to being the Stage Manager of several hit musicals such as Wonderful Town.

Rosalind Russell and the Brazilian Navy Boys of WONDERFUL TOWN

Just think of the impact on this smart, ambitious, talented young man of having the opportunity to work closely with vibrant, brilliant, significant theater artists like songwriters Betty Comden, Adolph Green and Leonard Bernstein, choreographer Donald Sadler, music director Lehman Engle, designer Raoul Pen Dubois, and with Mr. Abbott overseeing them all!

Note: Even this one group of collaborators on this one musical clearly demonstrates the thesis of my UW course and upcoming podcast. Every one of these artists (except Abbott) was either Jewish or Queer -- and many were both. You can read about my course "The Broadway Musical: How Immigrants, Jews, Queers and African-Americans Invented America's Signature Art Form" here: https://artsci.washington.edu/news/2019-05/surprising-history-musical-theater

Soon Prince convinced Abbott and his partners to let him join them as a co-producer on a few shows before going off on his own. He quickly became the “boy wonder” of Broadway producing a string of hit Golden Age shows including The Pajama Game, Damn Yankees, Fiddler On The Roof, and West Side Story.

But, of course, what he really wanted to do was direct.

Although the idea of the “Concept Musical” was initiated by Jerome Robbins though his work on Fiddler On The Roof, GYPSY, and West Side Story -- none of which can be called a concept musical. Prince was there, paying attention and he picked up the idea and ran with it -- in collaboration with the ideal, bold, queer creative partners: Kander & Ebb, Ron Field, Michael Bennett, and Stephen Sondheim. Prince lead them to create an extraordinary string of game changing musicals: Cabaret, Company, Follies, A Little Night Music, Pacific Overtures, Sweeney Todd, Evita, Show Boat, Phantom Of The Opera.

In collaboration with Russian-Jewish immigrant designer Boris Aronson Prince pioneered the use of epic, conceptual, non-naturalistic staging and design that totally transformed the way Broadway musicals looked and moved.

In a career that spanned more than 60 years Harold (Hal) Prince produced and/or directed more than 40 Broadway shows, and received 21 Tony Awards, more than any other single individual. Every current director of musicals, including myself, had been profoundly influenced and inspired by Hal Prince.