Bringing together scholars from musicology, literature, childhood studies, and theater, this volume examines the ways in which children's musicals tap into adult nostalgia for childhood while appealing to the needs and consumer potential of the child. The contributors take up a wide range of musicals, including works inspired by the books of children's authors such as Roald Dahl, P.L. Travers, and Francis Hodgson Burnett; created by Rodgers and Hammerstein, Lionel Bart, and other leading lights of musical theater; or conceived for a cast made up entirely of children. The collection examines musicals that propagate or complicate normative attitudes regarding what childhood is or should be. It also considers the child performer in movie musicals as well as in professional and amateur stage musicals. This far-ranging collection highlights the special place that musical theater occupies in the imaginations and lives of children as well as adults. The collection comes at a time of increased importance of musical theater in the lives of children and young adults.
Author(s): Donelle Ruwe, James Leve
Series: Studies in Childhood, 1700 to the Present
Publisher: Routledge
Year: 2020
Language: English
Pages: 278
City: London
Cover
Half Title
Series Page
Table Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Table of Contents
List of illustrations
Figures
Frontispiece, Photograph of Flagstaff Theatrikids production of The Wizard of Oz JR., 2016. Permission of editors
1.1 Magic-marker Jamilton poster by James Quincy Leve. Permission of editors
1.2 Photograph of Flagstaff Theatrikids production of The Wizard of Oz, Young Performer’s Edition, 2016. Permission of editors
2.1 Mary Martin (Marier Rainer) with Evanna Lien (Gretl), Mary Susan Locke (Marta), Marilyn Rogers (Brigitta), Joseph Stewart (Kurt), Kathy Dunn (Louisa), William Snowden (Friedrich) and Lauri Peters (Liesl) in The Sound of Music, Broadway, 1959. Photo by Friedman-Abeles; © The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts
2.2 Movie still from The Sound of Music, 20[sup(th)] Century Fox, 1965
6.1 Photo by Gjon Mili of the cast of The Me Nobody Knows. Life Magazine 1970, permission of Getty Images
8.1 Overture to the musical Annie (1977), mm. 1–4, routined by Peter Howard and Charles Strouse and orchestrated by Philip J. Lang
8.2 Overture to the musical Newsies (2012), mm. 1–4, routined by Michael Kosarin and orchestrated by Danny Troob
8.3 Harold Gray, Little Orphan Annie, October 22, 1932
8.4 Photo by Martha Swope ©Billy Rose Theatre Division, The New Public Library for the Performing Arts
8.5 Photograph by Deen van Meer of the “Seize the Day” number in the Broadway production of Newsies (2012) ©Disney
Table
7.1 Keys of Annie’s Songs in Annie
List of contributors
1 Children, childhood, and musical theater: an introduction
2 Beginning with Do Re Mi: childhood and The Sound of Music
3 Walt Disney, Dr. Benjamin Spock, and the Gospel of ideal childrearing: creating superlative nuclear families in Mary Poppins, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, and Bedknobs and Broomsticks
4 Saving Mr. [Blank]: rescuing the father through song in children’s and family musicals
5 Dickensian discourses: giving a (singing) voice to the child hero in Oliver! and Copperfield
6 Ghetto chic: utopianism and the authentic child in The Me Nobody Knows (1970)
7 Little girls, big voices: Annie
8 Urchins, unite: Newsies as an antidote to Annie
9 Agency, power, and the inner child: the “Revolting Children” of Matilda the Musical
10 Children’s musicals for educational and community settings
11 Broadway Junior
Bibliography of scholarly sources
Index
