Overview

What happens when Broadway goes abroad? Tell It to the World: The Broadway Musical Abroad offers a look at how the Broadway musical travels the world, influencing and even transforming local practices and traditions. It traces especially how the musical has been indigenized in South Korea and Germany, the commercial centers for Broadway musicals in East Asia and continental Europe. Both countries were occupied after World War II by the United States, which disseminated U.S. American popular music, jazz, movies, and musical theatre in the belief that these nations needed to rebuild their cultures in accordance with U.S. guidelines. By the 1990s, Broadway imports had become phenomenally popular in Seoul and Hamburg while home-grown musicals proliferated that adapted and transformed the prototypes that had been disseminated by the U.S. Although this book focuses on recent musicals, it also looks back through the twentieth century to plot the evolution of musical theatre in South Korea and Germany. Part One considers the key questions: What is a musical? Why is it the great success story of U.S. theatre? How has it been assimilated to musical theatre traditions around the world? Part Two focuses on musical theatre in South Korea, studying the import/export business in large-scale musicals about Korean history and innovative hybrid experiments that mix local performance traditions with the Broadway vernacular. Part Three moves to Europe to analyze the conflicted attitudes toward musicals in the German-speaking world. Its three chapters survey the history of musicals in Germany from 1945 until the fall of the Berlin Wall, the reconfiguration of musical theatre conventions by experimental directors, and finally the ground-breaking German-language productions of Broadway classics by Barrie Kosky and other innovative directors. In the twenty-first century, Broadway-style musical theatre has succeeded in becoming a lingua franca, the template for musical theatre around the world. This book shows how some of the most innovative, beautiful, and exciting musical theatre is being made outside the United States.

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9780190249533

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Reviews

Tell it to the World gives a standing ovation to the musical theatre of South Korea and Germany. Introducing the reader to musicals, practitioners, and even theatrical forms that may be unfamiliar, Savran shines a spotlight onto the stages of Europe and Asia to reveal their vibrant Broadway-style scenes. Meticulous, articulate, and enthused by countless nights at the theatre, Savran's book sings with his infectious passion for theatre, culture, and the musical. * Dominic Symonds, Professor of Musical Theatre, University of Lincoln, UK * In this remarkable, groundbreaking book, David Savran takes us on a fascinating journey to South Korea and Germany, where local theatre artists are reinventing the Broadway-style musical. Savran invites us to experience many musicals with him, and we benefit from his curiosity, passion, and erudition, his insider/outsider knowledge of the cultures, his brilliant analyses of musicals past and present, and his extraordinary talent for evoking performance in words. An essential and paradigm-changing book. * Stacy Wolf, author of Beyond Broadway: The Pleasure and Promise of Musical Theatre Across America *

Author Information

David Savran is a specialist in twentieth and twenty-first century U.S. and German theatre, musical theatre, and social theory. He is the author of eight books, most recently Highbrow/Lowdown: Theater, Jazz, and the Making of the New Middle Class, the winner of the Joe A. Callaway Prize. He served as a judge for the Obie Awards and the Lucille Lortel Awards and was a juror for the Pulitzer Prize in Drama. He holds the Vera Mowry Roberts Chair in American Theatre and is Distinguished Professor of Theatre and Performance at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York.

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