Show Boat: Performing Race in an American Musical (Broadway Legacies)
"A fascinating look at howShow Boathelped shape the American musical form and the significant role it continues to play in our conversation about race. Todd Decker has compiled an exhaustive, engaging, and immensely readable cultural history that resonates with the same vibrant emotional impact of the musical itself." --Susan Stroman, Director & Choreographer"Traveling through seemingly familiar territory, one makes startling new discoveries on every page about American music, theater, identity, and racial history. Decker demonstrates forcefully and conclusively whyShow Boatwas and remains the 'most important [American] musical ever made.'" --Thomas L. Riis, Director, American Music Research Center, University of Colorado at Boulder"Todd Decker opens a wide window on the extraordinary cultural reach ofShow Boat, with special focus on its racial complexities. For Decker,Show Boatis not a fixed text but rather a fascinating and fluid performance object that shifts with the social codes and commercial demands of its many eras." --Carol J. Oja, Professor, Harvard University, and author ofMaking Music Modern: New York in the 1920s"A well written, thoroughly researched and cogently presented new study on one of the most studied and, for that matter, most deserving of study musicals of the twentieth century." --Brad Hathaway - Theater Shelf"An excellent overview of all aspects of the show...Decker demonstrates a fine command of sources, furnishes good documentation, and includes some photos, illustrations, andmusical examples...Recommended." --Choice"Decker offers a persuasive argument for the continued relevance of this classic musical, [demonstrating] the productive potential for historiographies of American musical theatre written across rather than 'along divided racial lines.'" --Theatre Journal