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Performance, Trauma and Puerto Rico in Musical Theatre

Performance, Trauma and Puerto Rico in Musical Theatre

Hardcover

Series: Routledge Advances in Theatre & Performance Studies

Theater HistoryPlaywritingTechnical Theater

ISBN10: 1032251956
ISBN13: 9781032251950
Publisher: Routledge
Published: Aug 11 2023
Pages: 136
Weight: 0.81
Height: 0.38 Width: 6.00 Depth: 9.00
Language: English

This study positions four musicals and their associated artists as mobilizers of defiant joy in relation to trauma and healing in Puerto Rico.

This book argues that the historical trajectory of these musicals has formed a canon of works that have reiterated, resisted or transformed experiences of trauma through linguistic, ritual, and geographic interventions. These traumas may be disaster-related, migrant-related, colonial or patriarchal. Bilingualism and translation, ritual action, and geographic space engage moments of trauma (natural disaster, incarceration, death) and healing (community celebration, grieving, emancipation) in these works. The musicals considered are West Side Story (1957, 2009, 2019), The Capeman (1998), In the Heights (2008), and Hamilton (2015). Central to this argument is that each of the musicals discussed is tied to Puerto Rico, either through the representation of Puerto Rican characters and stories, or through the Puerto Rican positionality of its creators. The author moves beyond the musicals to consider Lin-Manuel Miranda as an embodied site of healing, that has been met with controversy, as well as post-Hurricane Maria relief efforts led by Miranda on the island and from a distance. In each of the works discussed, acts of belonging shape notions of survivorship and witness.

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Rua, Colleen

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Theater History