Changed for Good A Feminist History of the Broadway Musical [Paperback]

From Adelaide in Guys and Dolls to Nina in In the Heights and Elphaba in Wicked, female characters in Broadway musicals have belted and crooned their way into the American psyche. In this lively book, Stacy Wolf illuminates the women of American musical theatre - performers, creators, and characters -- from the start of the cold war to the present day, creating a new, feminist history of the genre. Moving from decade to decade, Wolf first highlights the assumptions that circulated about gender and sexuality at the time. She then looks at the leading musicals to stress the key aspects of the plays as they relate to women, and often finds overlooked moments of empowerment for female audience members. The musicals discussed here are among the most beloved in the canon-- West Side Story, Cabaret, A Chorus Line, Phantom of the Opera, and many others--with special emphasis on the blockbuster Wicked. Along the way, Wolf demonstrates how the musical since the mid-1940s has actually been dominated by women--women onstage, women in the wings, and women offstage as spectators and fans.

Introduction: Gender, Genre, and Musical Theatre
Chapter One: 1950s Musicals and Queer Female Duets
Chapter Two: The Single Woman and the Active Female Body in 1960s Musicals
Chapter Three: The Ensemble as Queer Family
Chapter Four: Women in the 1980s Megamusicals, Humming the Scenery
Chapter Five: Musicals in the 1990s-2000s: Female Protagonists, First and Last Numbers, and the Intersectional Performance of Race and Gender
Chapter Six: Queer Conventions in the Broadway Musical Wicked
Epilogue: Wicked Divas, Musical Theatre, and Internet Girl Fans
Endnotes

I found Stacy Wolf's book fascinating and surprising. It not only gave me a fresh perspective on the history of musical theatre, it revealed things to me about my own show I didn't know were there. --Stephen Schwartz

This book is absolutely brilliant on many levelslÓ5