‘Anyone can whistle’ Sondheim: The intellectual autobiography of a Sondheim studies scholar

Abstract

This piece of autoethnographic writing analyses its author’s coming of age as a scholar and connects anecdotes to the history of Black actors in Sondheim’s musicals. From Reri Grist and Elizabeth Taylor in West Side Story (Winter Garden Theatre, New York City, 1957) to Francois Batiste, Adante Carter and Amber Gray in Here We Are (The Shed, New York City, 2023), Black actors co-create Sondheim’s musicals on and off official theatrical stages even as Sondheim studies as a field erases their labour. By building on Brent Staples’s experience of racism and Claude M. Steele’s theory of stereotype threat, the offensive mechanisms visited on Black men and boys are considered alongside Sondheim’s notable works throughout. Attention is also paid to what musical theatre studies scholars can learn about epistemology and historiography from Black people’s experiential knowledge and lived experience.