Beyond Broadway

The Pleasure and Promise of Musical Theatre Across America

The idea of American musical theater often conjures up images of bright lights and big city, but its lifeblood is found in amateur productions at high schools, community theaters, after-school programs, summer camps, and dinner theaters. In Beyond Broadway, author Stacy Wolf looks at the widespread presence and persistence of musical theater in US culture and examines it as a social practice - a live, visceral experience of creating, watching, and listening. 

Why does local musical theater flourish in America? Why do so many Americans continue to passionately engage in a century-old artistic practice that requires intense, person-to-person collaboration? And why do audiences still flock to musicals in their hometowns? Touring American elementary schools, a middle-school performance festival, after-school programs, high schools, summer camps, state park outdoor theaters, community theaters, and dinner theaters from California to Tennessee, Wolf illustrates musical theater's abundance and longevity in the US as a thriving social activity that touches millions of lives.

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