Research

Revised abstract

SIX—the British fringe musical turned global smash hit—is set to achieve and surpass its 1500th Broadway performance in May of 2025.  Though lauded by performers and fans for its theme of female empowerment, scholars have debated its merit as a feminist text (Barnes 2020, Schrader 2020, Boffone 2021).  However, few scholars have applied intersectional frameworks to their critiques of SIX’s feminism.  An intersectional approach is required in order to properly deal with SIX, a musical which—in addition to unbinding the Tudor queens from time and space—also erases and re-races their whiteness.

This paper provides an alternative reading of SIX, noting the complexities and limits of the queens’ feminism as they strategically deceive their audiences to ultimately extoll lessons about gendered assumptions and women's autonomy.  Drawing on writings by Angela Davis (1981, 1998), Sandy Grande (2004), and Kim Hong Nguyen (2024), I argue that though the queens intentionally play into in-fighting and competition, they use visual and musical displays of solidarity to convey their support for one another.  However, the queens’ transformation into a liberated collective is incomplete due to their deep investment in “whitestream” (Grande), “mean girl” (Nguyen) feminism. This contorted version of feminism—one steeped in individualism, imperialism, and consumer capitalism—undermines the queens’ utopic reimagining of their life stories at the conclusion of the musical.

Whitestream, mean girl feminism does not just undergird SIX’s book, music, and lyrics; it also pervades professional productions’ casting and hiring practices as well as the Broadway production’s advertising and marketing. Its deep investment in consumer capitalism reflects Broadway’s own and raises the question: can any musical hope to achieve or retain a radical message on "The Great White Way?"

Revised abstract

The past quarter century has witnessed two significant transformations for American musical theater: 1) Broadway into a 1.5 billion dollar industry and 2) its repertoire into an acceptable topic of scholarly research. However, within musical theater studies, one population remains curiously understudied: the instrumentalists who provide sonic backdrops for onstage actor-vocalists.

This paper joins recent efforts to consider musicians’ labor and performance practices in productions of musicals (Morgan 2024, Alexander-Hills 2024, 2022). It demonstrates that musicians working in this niche, “middlebrow” performance setting must simultaneously navigate the economic precarity associated with freelance music careers while seamlessly fitting into intensely bureaucratized, large scale arts organizations more commonly associated with permanent employment and “highbrow” art forms. 

I argue that the longstanding tradition of concealing theater musicians from audience view has trained audiences and industry professionals alike to overlook not just the typical ensemble’s whiteness but also its masculinity and class division. I identify industry-wide, exploitative labor practices which further compound challenges for marginalized musicians. Finally, I link these practices to musical theater’s historic roots in (Blackface) minstrelsy and Blacksound (Morrison 2024) in order to demonstrate that for well over a century, the musicians best poised to contend with American musical theater’s unique labor constraints have been wealthy white men.

Abstract

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