Her Turn on Stage: The Role of Women in Musical Theatre

by Grace Barnes

Audiences for musical theater are predominantly women, yet shows are frequently created and produced by men. Onstage, female characters are depicted as victims or sex objects and lack the complexity of their male counterparts. Offstage, women are under-represented among writers, directors, composers and choreographers. While other areas of the arts rally behind gender equality, musical theater demonstrates a disregard for women and an authentic female voice. If musical theater reflects prevailing societal attitudes, what does the modern musical tell us about the place of women in contemporary America, the UK and Australia? Are women deliberately kept out of musical theater by men jealously guarding their territory or is the absence of women a result of the modernization of the genre? Based on interviews with successful female performers, writers, directors, choreographers and executives, this book offers a unique female viewpoint on musical theater today.

220 pages, Paperback

First published July 31, 2015

Reviews

[Kate Stericker · Rating 4 out of 5]

On the whole, I found this book a thorough and insightful look at the issue of female representation in musical theatre, and I appreciated the range of female voices that provide perspectives throughout. However, while the majority of the text presents thoughtful analysis of Barnes' topics, she occasionally lapses into flippant asides that undermine the book's position as a scrupulous academic text. For example, there is a long list of musicals which Barnes rattles off several times as examples of "the 'kiddie dollar' onslaught" but does not engage with in any meaningful way, including Beauty and the Beast, Mary Poppins, and Newsies. Writing so many shows off out of hand feels dismissive and like a missed opportunity for analysis. Similarly, the chapter entitled 'It's Not Just for Gays Anymore' contained so many unsourced generalizations about gay audiences that it began to make me uncomfortable. To pick a fairly innocuous example, Barnes claims that "while women are more likely to be found at Wicked and Mamma Mia!, gay men will congregate at a sophisticated Sondheim show, Light in the Piazza, or any of the diva musicals," but does not clearly indicate what research this is based on or how broadly it applies (assuming that Barnes would not stand by the universal scope that is implied by the wording). Additionally, the text contains a noticeable number of typos and small grammatical errors (particularly concerning the use of commas) and would have benefited from more rigorous copy-editing. However, with these concerns aside, I enjoyed the book and would strongly recommend it to anyone interested in media studies and musical theatre.

[Julia · Rating 3 out of 5]

There was much to get on board with in this book appealing for better representation of women in musical theatre. However, there were times when I had to work hard at not seeing it as a personal attack on 2 British theatre impresarios. They had clearly pissed off Ms Barnes.

I found it a little hard to envisage the US/Broadway as the shining example of forward thinking and front runner in pushing for more women. This book was published 9 years ago so it would be interesting to see how far we have progressed since then.