"The musical theatre repertory is not composed of titles popular in the theatre but by those with successful cast recordings, movie versions, or even illegal bootlegs on YouTube. The shows audiences know, and the texts and music they expect to hear when they attend a production, are defined by media consumed at home more than by memories of performances witnessed in the theatre. The technologies that made these media possible developed concurrently with and shaped the American musical as an art form. At the turn of the 20th ...
Read More
"The musical theatre repertory is not composed of titles popular in the theatre but by those with successful cast recordings, movie versions, or even illegal bootlegs on YouTube. The shows audiences know, and the texts and music they expect to hear when they attend a production, are defined by media consumed at home more than by memories of performances witnessed in the theatre. The technologies that made these media possible developed concurrently with and shaped the American musical as an art form. At the turn of the 20th century photography and sound recording made it possible to capture the visual and aural elements of a particular production, and new printing technologies made scripts and sheet music faster and cheaper to produce. In the 20th century improvements in these technologies as well as the invention of video recording and the commercial internet made it possible to, in the works of the United States copyright law, "fix" new kinds of musicals in "tangible media." Fixing the Musical examines how the affordances and limitations of these technologies established a repertory of titles that are most frequently performed and defined the texts used in these performances"--
Read Less