| The American Musical and the Performance of Personal Identity Subjects: Musicals -- United States -- History and criticism; Musicals -- Social aspects -- United States; Personality and culture; Motion pictures -- United States -- History; The American musical has long provided an important vehicle through which writers, performers, and audiences reimagine who they are and how they might best interact with the world around them. Musicals are especially good at this because they provide not only an opportunity for us to enact dramatic versions of alternative identities, but also the material for performing such alternatives in the real world, through songs and the characters and attitudes those songs project. Raymond Knapp is professor of musicology at the University of California, Los Angeles, and the author of The American Musical and the Formation of National Identity (Princeton), winner of the George Jean Nathan Award for Dramatic Criticism. He has also published books on Brahms and Mahler. |