Ryan Donovan’s 'Broadway Bodies: A Critical History of Conformity' Available to the Public
Company:
Oxford University Press and Ryan Donovan
RYAN DONOVAN’S BROADWAY BODIES: A CRITICAL HISTORY OF CONFORMITY TO BE PUBLISHED BY OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS FEBRUARY 2023
New York, NY (January 17, 2023) Oxford University Press will soon publish Ryan Donovan’s highly anticipated Broadway Bodies: A Critical History of Conformity to be released as an e-book February 17 and in print on February 24, 2023. In Broadway Bodies, Donovan contends that Broadway has historically treated, and continues to treat, its fictional characters better than the actors hoping to get cast in these roles. Through musical theatre history, in-depth research, interviews, and critical commentary, Broadway Bodies explores how sexuality, body size, physical difference, and disability have intersected with gender, race, and ethnicity in Broadway casting and performance for the past five decades.
Based on the latest research, historic photographs, and new interviews with Broadway performers, casting directors, and stars including Baayork Lee and Marisha Wallace, Donovan contextualizes the power dynamics and politics of Broadway musical casting from 1970-2020. Starting with A Chorus Line and the establishment of the triple-threat performer, and continuing through the use of fat suits and size stigmatization in musicals Dreamgirls and Hairspray, the casting of straight actors to play the central gay couple in La Cage aux Folles, Deaf West Theatre’s Broadway revivals, and much more, Broadway Bodies tells a history of Broadway musical casting and how the paradoxes of inclusion have ultimately enforced a kind of body conformity immediately recognizable today as the Broadway Body.
“I wrote this book because my own relationship to Broadway musicals is complicated, and as I began researching I discovered just how obvious, insidious, and little-talked-about these issues are,” shared Donovan. “As a former performer, I intimately understand how appearance and employment are profoundly intertwined—and how this inevitably impacts those whose bodies don't fit the mold. Broadway is ever so slowly changing and in Broadway Bodies, I set the stage for the current state of casting by looking back and asking how we got here.”
Release Details
Broadway Bodies: A Critical History of Conformity
Publish Date: e-book February 17, 2023; print February 24, 2023
336 Pages | 28 black & white photographs
Paperback ISBN: 9780197551080
Price $39.95
Hardcover ISBN: 9780197551073
Price: $125
Ebook ISBN: 9780197551103
Price: $38.99
Access: Broadway Bodies: A Critical History of Conformity is available in ebook form and image descriptions for every photograph included will be available via the author’s website by February 1, 2023. To request access directly from OUP, click here.
Available for pre-order via Oxford University Press, Amazon, and Barnes & Noble.
Praise for Broadway Bodies
"Ryan Donovan's book immediately shifts the conversation on how we talk about musical theatre. Broadway Bodies is deeply knowledgeable, politically astute, and highly readable. I loved the book's clarity and purpose—this is a must-read for theatre and performance scholars and for anyone who cares about American theatre." -- David Roman, University of Southern California
"Ryan Donovan's fascinating and groundbreaking book explores what Broadway musical theatre hides in plain sight: bodies on stage and the politics of casting some bodies and not others. Through impeccable historical research, probing interviews, incisive performance analysis, and vivid firsthand experience, Donovan offers a new history of Broadway musicals that shines a light on the industry's troubling and often shocking casting practices. This essential-reading volume unearths how size, ability, and sexuality delimit the 'Broadway body' and mask casting's misogyny, racism, ableism, and fat phobia." -- Stacy Wolf, Princeton University
About Author Ryan Donovan
Ryan Donovan is Assistant Professor of Theater Studies at Duke University. He is the author of Broadway Bodies: A Critical History of Conformity (Oxford University Press) and co-editor of The Routledge Companion to Musical Theatre. His second book, Queer Approaches in Musical Theatre will be published by Bloomsbury in July 2023.
Oxford University Press
Oxford University Press (OUP) is the world's leading university press with the widest global presence. Their academic publishing programme serves scholars, teachers and researchers, publishing important and rigorous research and scholarship across subject areas stretching from History to Life Sciences to Economics.
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