Music Theater and Politics

Music Theater and Politics examines music theatre's relevance, relations with, and revelations of, politics and the political. Drawing on case studies from South-East Asia, South Africa, East Central Europe, Northwestern Europe, and North America, the book interrogates music theater's capacity to construct and reinforce or reject and resist different regimes of power and articulations of identities and subjectivities in local, national and transnational / global contexts. Across the chapters, the book interrogates the music theater's politics of historicizing and memorializing, in the sense of reconstructing and restaging official and alternative histories and memories. Through critical analyses of specific performances, the authors raise salient questions about music theater's capacity to challenge, counter, or even reify hegemonic histories and narratives. Operating within this framework of decentered positionalities, on the intersection of geopolitics and the social categories of race, ethnicity and class, the authors offer perspectives on political issues grounded in deep understanding of local contexts, while recognizing their case studies' relevance beyond these. They address music theater's engagement and entanglement with the political at the level of local communities and environments and the nation and state, as well as transnational and intercultural exchange and global markets. Music Theater and Politics highlights how performances can retell forgotten or hidden histories, give voice to marginalized communities, and question dominant ideas. It also looks at how music theater responds to issues like colonialism, nationalism, and climate change, offering new, decentered viewpoints that connect local contexts to wider global conversations.