Maternal Representations in Twenty-First Century Broadway Musicals

Maternal Representations in Twenty-First Century Broadway Musicals: Stage Mothers analyzes Broadway productions within the context of their presentation and assessment of motherhood and the variety of roles for mother figures. Using a frame of feminist and psychoanalytical positions, Gina MacKenzie establishes, defines, and interprets mother figures in contemporary Broadway, according to original categorizations of the absent, inconsequential, and overbearing mothers. MacKenzie considers how and why commercial representation of mother figures are limited and predominantly negative, even as fiction, poetry, and other forms of drama offer a much wider and progressive view of the varieties of motherhood possible in society, asserting the need for greater representation of mother figures in commercial musical theatre today.

Appeals to scholars of American studies, drama, contemporary theatre, and women's studies Merges popular theatre culture and literary theory as well as engages with music theory, performance studies, and drama theory Examples how musical theatre defines the American imagination

Autorentext

Gina Masucci MacKenze is the Associate Dean, School of Arts and Sciences, and Associate Professor of English at Holy Family University, USA, and author of The Theatre of the Real: Yeats, Beckett and Sondheim (2008). She is an associate editor of The American Book Review, and advisory editor for drama for The Journal of Modern Literature.

Inhalt

Chapter 1: Introduction.- Chapter 2: Missing Mothers.- Chapter 3: The Overbearing Mother.- Chapter 4: The Inconsequential Mother.- Chapter 5: The New Mother.

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