CFP: The Musical Abroad
Doug Reside is soliciting papers for a panel at the West End Musical Theatre conference described in the previous entry. Please email abstracts of any length to dreside AT umd DOT edu.
PANEL DESCRIPTION:
Today, when a musical is flown across the Atlantic (in either direction), a few minor changes are sometimes made to the text and score to “translate” the piece for the new culture. In the 19th and early 20th century, on the other hand, exported musicals were often so completely rewritten that the new piece would share little more than a title with its original. This panel will examine what the differences between the Broadway and West End productions of pre-1930s musicals reveal about American and British cultures and about the attitudes of each towards the art form of the musical. I would also like to invite discussion of the reasons why, in the later part of the 20th century, texts and scores became far more stable across international productions.