Rosenthal provides a critical history and analysis of the connections between mainstream and experimental theatre in New York, from the 1960s to 2020, with a focus on Broadway. She argues that Broadway and mainstream theatre underwent multiple and significant transformations during the 1960s and in the decades that followed. Rosenthal analyzes the work of playwrights, directors, composers, choreographers, and designers who made art both downtown in experimental theatres and uptown on Broadway. The concept of the “mainstream experimental” is used as a descriptor for Broadway throughout the following half century, as commercial theatre continued to push and shape US society and culture at large. Alongside artists, pathbreaking producers off and on Broadway are the focus of this chapter, along with the prominence of ensemble-based musicals and dramatic works and the success of solo performances on Broadway. The contributions and legacies of LGBTQ artists such as Tony Kushner, Larry Kramer, and Lisa Kron, and Black artists including August Wilson, George C. Wolfe, Ntozake Shange, Anna Deavere Smith, and Jeremy O. Harris, are central to Rosenthal’s argument and critique.

The final chapter looks at how emoji have been commercialized and the extent to which we’re now seeing the ‘emojification’ of modern society in much the same way that the late twentieth century was marked by a process of ‘Disneyfication’. Not only are brands and advertisers embracing emoji culture for marketing purposes, but the large tech companies are increasingly commodifying them as part of their commercial strategies. This is having implications for the evolution of language which are markedly different from what we’ve seen before and raises interesting ethical questions about the politics and economics of communication.