MUS 245-345 Broadway Economics and Ideology

How is political ideology conveyed through storytelling and composition in musicals? We will look at a variety of significant productions of American musicals from the mid-twentieth century to current day. We will focus on works by Steven Sondheim and his collaborators, including an unproduced and abandoned collaboration with Leonard Bernstein, The Race to Urga, and then look at the “creeping virus” of jukebox musicals, the  dominant new commercial form. As we study music and text, we will consider how the politics of musicals interacts with and reflects real estate, finance, and labor conditions on Broadway and the larger economy. [GM1, H, V]

Credits

1

Cross Listed Courses

None

Prerequisite

None

Corequisite

None

Offered

Spring

Instructor

Akiva Zamcheck