Gender is a Fundamental Element of the Broadway Musical

While many will agree that Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night is critically acclaimed to be one of the most entertaining and well-liked pieces that he has written, there tends to be a discrepancy over how the characters in the play are portrayed when it comes to the importance of gender roles. After reading James C Bulman’s article over the Globe’s more recent performance of Twelfth Night and Shakespeare’s original written version, I realized that there are many ways that this famous piece has been portrayed and each has its own pros and cons.

This is a must watch Broadway show that makes your fine, terrible, or even boring day, an absolute blast. The Play That Goes Wrong has finally made its way to America and right at the heart of New York City near Times Square at the Lyceum Theatre. Therefore, the experience is a win-win situation for the audience. The Lyceum Theatre’s architecture is astonishing as it is filled with ornaments, I also realized the letter ‘L’ around the theater, but the most interesting fact is that it is a landmark. It has a proscenium stage while the audience is in the orchestra, balcony, or the mezzanine seats, like where I sat, and there is barely any space if you are a tall person. My seat was near the far end of mezzanine, I couldn’t see a part of the left side of the stage, so I found myself bending sideways to see what was going on, but I saw nothing. I found the side stage lights and a side balcony blocking my view and yet I had a great time.

“The Boys in the Band”, is a play about male homosexual relationships and the revealing truths of being gay in the 1960s. The play gives audiences a distinct perspective of homosexuality on the stage up until that time. The setting is in a New York City apartment that is owned by Michael. He and his gay friends are preparing a birthday party for Harold. Alan McCarthy, a former college roommate of Michael, also shows up at the party unexpectedly. In this paper, we will focus on Alan and Harold and their behaviors and impacts in the play.

“On Broadway, although some female roles are narrow, demeaning, passive, or long-suffering and convey weakness, the performer sings with incredible strength. Listening to the female singing voice is a more complicated phenomenon. Visually, the character singing is the passive object of our gaze. But aurally, she is resonant; her musical speech drowns out everything in range. A singer, more than any other musical performer, stands before us having wrested the composing voice away from the lyricist and composer who wrote the score.” Said Musicologist Carolyn Abbate (Wolf, p.31)

The play that I went to see was Beautiful: The Carol King Musical. I attended opening night of this play on Tuesday, February 21st of this year. This musical is about the true and remarkable story of her uprising career. Carol started off as a song writer when she was only a teen writing with her future husband, Gerry Goffin. The play is about an extraordinary person who battles everyday issues, but ultimately overcomes the odds and adversities thrown at her. With her talent in music and singing; Carol King went on to have one of the most successful solo acts in music history. King’s story is truly inspiring and this play attributes to her legacy not just as an artist but also a person. The play’s genre is musical theatre because singing and dancing are essential parts of the play. The director’s purpose of this play was to tell in great detail the life of American artist Carol King.

This past weekend, I experienced the University of Virginia Drama Department’s production of August Wilson’s Seven Guitars. This performance was wonderfully entertaining, and I applaud the department for choosing this play in particular to perform. Its themes, which focus on the desire to achieve success, acceptance, and a greater knowledge of ones place in the world in the face of adversity, are as relevant today as they were when Wilson first conceived this play. The plot pays special attention to the importance of race and gender in society, allowing the viewer to realize the unfortunate reality that some of the issues experienced by black men and women during the 1940s survive to this day. The devotion and commitment of the cast and crew in their attempt to fulfill Wilson’s dreams and ideas was palpable, and their energy radiated throughout the audience. Although it was a lengthy production (taking around three hours to complete), the performance seemed to keep everyone on the edges of their seats, and, at its eventual conclusion, left those in attendance yearning for more from this talented group. There were four specific elements made this production of Seven Guitars so enjoyable: its actors, costumes, varied rhythm, and video design. I would highly recommend attending this play directed by Theresa M. Davis, and eagerly await her next production.

Each of the following excerpts, Act 2, Scene 2 from Siegfried by Richard Wagner, “Habanera” from Carmen (Act I, Scene 5) by Georges Bizet, and “Non So Piu Cosa Son” from The Marriage of Figaro (Act I, scene 4) by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, present many different reflections of gender and gender stereotypes. In this short essay, I will address how each piece uniquely reflects gender, by discussing elements such as character dress, orchestral accompaniment, timbre, and body language.

In 1951, Frank Loesser’s Guys & Dolls opened and received what were said to be “the most unanimously ecstatic set of reviews in Broadway history” (Block 200). For a show whose development included disappointing librettos from eleven different writers, this feat was truly unbelievable (Lewis 73). The unprecedented success of Guys & Dolls and its ability to remain culturally significant, as a popularly revived piece, is the product of several attributes unique to this show. The unusual writing progression that led to a truly integrated libretto in terms of the relationship of the score to the text, Loesser’s assimilation of a unified, yet distinctive style of speech into his lyrics for the

The stage performance of Chicago offered a spectacle that I expected before attending the show. I knew there was going to be scantly clad girls with dark makeup and saucy attitudes. The performers brought to life all that was raunchy in the entertainment business during the roaring twenties. The lifestyle in Chicago featured jazz, booze, sex and crime. More importantly, Chicago had beautiful, young women with the dream of having their own Vaudeville act. The two main female characters, Velma and Roxy were two such women hoping to capture the public's attention. The composition of the show is a metaphoric integration of Vaudeville type acts amongst the book scenes and diegetic musical numbers.

The most prominent woman figure in this play is Linda, but the male characters in this play also give us insight into women’s roles and help feed the feminist analyses

In the book “Gender Trouble” (1990), feminist theorist Judith Butler explains “gender is not only a social construct, but also a kind of performance such as a show we put on, a costume or disguise we wear” (Butler). In other words, gender is a performance, an act, and costumes, not the main aspect of essential identity. By understanding this theory of gender as an act, performance, we can see how gender has greatly impacted the outcome of the play in William Shakespeare’s Othello. From a careful analysis of the story, tragedy in Othello is result of violating expected gender roles, gender performance by Desdemona and Othello, and the result of Iago’s inability to tolerate these violations.

The musicals Billy Elliot and Grease present both conventional and unconventional representations of gender throughout. Both musicals also seem to obscure the message of the underlying gender stereotyping issues by overshadowing them with elements such as music, dance and costume.

Comedy, in the Elizabethan era, often included themes of wit, mistaken identity, love, and tragedy, all tied up with a happy ending. These themes are prevalent in William Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, a comical play that explores the pangs of unrequited love and the confusion of gender. Love is a powerful emotion that causes suffering, happiness, and disorder throughout the play. The play also demonstrates the blurred lines of gender identity, which ties into the modern day debate on sexuality and gender identity. The main characters in the play, Viola, Olivia, and Orsino are connected by a love triangle, each person pursuing an unrequited love. Suffering from love and the fluidity of gender are the prevalent themes explored throughout the play and intertwined with Viola, Olivia, and Orsino.

The place of women within the theatre is well known, that being that they had no place within the stage.  Women's parts were played by young men in

This idea is relevant because on the stage, the Restoration actress, is nothing but an ornament in the male gaze. This attitude is apparent as Thomas Shadwell links the new phenomenon of female performers with painted theatrical scenes, both innovative commodities for audience consumption: