Mediated Musical Theatre

Abstract

In the first two decades of the twenty-first century, the creation and dissemination of access to musical theatre through digital technologies, including the internet, social media, streaming services, and satellite radio, has amplified the perception that Broadway and its audiences’ experiences of its content are more mediated than ever before. While this digital mass mediation of musical theatre has expanded the genre’s reach and audiences’ experiences of it in a contemporary media landscape, this digital revolution is just the latest in a continuum of the relationship between new media technologies and musical theatre. As with the introduction of previous technologies, rather than diminishing the aura of these shows as singular, ephemeral events, digital mediation has increased audience engagement and created experiences to which audiences can return to again and again. In this chapter, I offer an overview of mediated experiences across a variety of technologies in musical theatre in order to demonstrate the ways in which these media continue to inform how audiences understand and interact with musical theatre in live performance and through mediated experiences. Ultimately, in looking at how musical theatre has been influenced by media technologies, I explore the questions of what counts as musical theatre and where, with respect to its technologies, musical theatre is.