‘When you change the view from where you stood, the things you view will change for good’: An introduction to the mobilities paradigm in musical theatre

Abstract

Musical theatre is frequently framed as connected to place and space, as terms like ‘the Broadway musical’ or ‘the Viennese operetta’ imply. National categorization, used prominently in titles of key monographs and handbooks, has turned out to be a moulding structure for the genre’s historiography. The term ‘American popular song form’ insinuates that musical form and style may reasonably be categorized by national adjectives. This is also true for the national attribution of earlier genres, such as the supposedly British ballad opera, French opéra comique and German singspiel. Signature pieces of the genre, e.g., the musicals of Rodgers and Hammerstein, have been read as documents of national re-affirmation. Nevertheless, a major portion of the repertoire can just as well be reinterpreted as a statement for mobility, thus bringing into question the tropes of regional rootedness and national at-homeness. Starting with methodological assumptions given in Stephen Greenblatt’s cultural mobility manifesto (), this article will examine the unquestioned frames of fixity in musical theatre scholarship and sound out alternatives that allow readings of the genre as mobile.