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1 results

  • 1 - Performing Social Relevance in the American Musical before West Side Story

  • from Part I - Before West Side Story
  • Edited by Paul R. Laird, University of Kansas, Elizabeth A. Wells, Mount Allison University, Canada
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Companion to <i>West Side Story</i>
    Published online:
    09 January 2025
    Print publication:
    09 January 2025, pp 3-18

  • Summary

    Depicting issues of social relevance has been a mainstay of the American musical theatre since its origins, and this chapter traces several socially relevant threads in musicals that appeared before West Side Story. These include immigrant experiences, race, knife violence, politics, and the allure of Latin America. Employing the notion of palimpsests, resonances of musicals as early as The Mulligan Guard Ball (1879), with its central plot point of race relations among immigrant communities, infuse the history of the American musical and help place West Side Story within this continuum.