BROADWAY BODIES: A CRITICAL HISTORY OF CONFORMITY To Be Published By Oxford University Press February 2023

Oxford University Press will soon publish Ryan Donovan's Broadway Bodies: A Critical History of Conformity on February 17, 2023.

In Broadway Bodies, Donovan contends that Broadway has historically treated, and continues to treat, its fictional characters better than the actors hoping to get cast in these roles. Through musical theatre history, in-depth research, interviews, and critical commentary, Broadway Bodies explores how sexuality, body size, physical difference, and disability have intersected with gender, race, and ethnicity in Broadway casting and performance for the past five decades.

Based on the latest research, historic photographs, and new interviews with Broadway performers, casting directors, and stars including Baayork Lee and Marisha Wallace, Donovan contextualizes the power dynamics and politics of Broadway musical casting from 1970-2020. Starting with A Chorus Line and the establishment of the triple-threat performer, and continuing through the use of fat suits and size stigmatization in musicals Dreamgirls and Hairspray, the casting of straight actors to play the central gay couple in La Cage aux Folles, Deaf West Theatre's Broadway revivals, and much more, Broadway Bodies tells a history of Broadway musical casting and how the paradoxes of inclusion have ultimately enforced a kind of body conformity immediately recognizable today as the Broadway Body.

"I wrote this book because my own relationship to Broadway musicals is complicated, and as I began researching I discovered just how obvious, insidious, and little-talked-about these issues are," shared Donovan. "As a former performer, I intimately understand how appearance and employment are profoundly intertwined-and how this inevitably impacts those whose bodies don't fit the mold. Broadway is ever so slowly changing and in Broadway Bodies, I set the stage for the current state of casting by looking back and asking how we got here."

Broadway Bodies: A Critical History of Conformity

Publish Date: February 17, 2023

336 Pages | 28 black & white photographs

Paperback ISBN: 9780197551080

Price $39.95

Hardcover ISBN: 9780197551073

Price: $125

Ebook ISBN: 9780197551103

Price: $38.99

Access: Broadway Bodies: A Critical History of Conformity is available in ebook form and image descriptions for every photograph included will be available via the author's website by February 1, 2023. To request access directly from OUP, click here.

Available for pre-order via Oxford University Press, Amazon, and Barnes & Noble.

 

Broadway Bodies cover image: dancer Ann Reinking in a scene from the Broadway production of the musical A Chorus Line, 1980. Photo by Martha Swope © New York Public Library for the Performing Arts. 

Image Description: In a black and white image, dancer Ann Reinking stands with her long legs in a V, hands hovering over her chest and elbows up. She wears a long sleeve leotard and heeled character shoes; her tie-on dance skirt shows motion. Beneath the photo appears bold text in huge yellow letters “Broadway Bodies.” This text appears in the O of Bodies: “A Critical History of Conformity”.  In white text: “Ryan Donovan.”