Sarah K Whitfield | Royal College of Music (original) (raw)
Papers by Sarah K Whitfield
Procedural audio has been the subject of significant contemporary interest, but prior examples in... more Procedural audio has been the subject of significant contemporary interest, but prior examples in relation to theatre sound are limited. After providing background to theatre sound and procedural audio, we introduce two artefacts, RayGun and INTERIOR, that explore issues around theatre sound. RayGun is an augmented prop prototype that uses sensor driven, procedurally generated and locally diffused sound to address prior deficiencies. INTERIOR reimagines Maurice Maeterlinck’s 1895 play Interior as an embedded, generative and largely procedurally generated audio play housed in a shortwave radio-like artefact. Intended to provide an accessible experience, the listener uses a single knob interface to scan through a soundscape of simulated radio stations and ‘find’ the play. We present some initial findings and conclude with suggestions for future work
Research chronicle/Research chronicle - Royal Music Association, Apr 15, 2024
This article explores how historical musicology can use computational methods within a minimal co... more This article explores how historical musicology can use computational methods within a minimal computing framework, recovering the performance histories of three migrant musicians, producing valuable new information about their careers. Líza Fuchsová, Maria Lidka, and Paul Hamburger all left Nazi-occupied Europe during the late 1930s and settled permanently in the UK. Fuchsová (1913-1977) was a Czech pianist who became an advocate for Czech musical culture as well as an important piano soloist; Hamburger (1920-2004) was an accompanist and teacher who left Vienna for London and became a senior figure in BBC radio and Guildhall professor; and Lidka (1914-2013) [Marianne Liedtke], was a violinist, orchestra leader and later Royal College of Music professor. Their careers have been underexplored, but machine-read digitised archives have opened new possibilities for finding and sorting what can seem like an overwhelming amount of performance data. This article uses a minimal computing led approach to demonstrate building a robust and accessible structure to interrogate performance data and establish performance histories. This article will demonstrate the value of this framework and will show how it can be applied to historical musicology work.
Routledge eBooks, Jul 17, 2018
My fellow PhD students at Queen Mary have always been supportive and generous with their ideas an... more My fellow PhD students at Queen Mary have always been supportive and generous with their ideas and time, special thanks to Nick Field, Bret Jones, Jim Reynolds and Sophie Leighton-Kelly. Particular thanks to the departmental staff, including Catherine Silverstone, Michael McKinnie and Bridget Escolme. For the disability department there and in particular the loyal encouragement of Paul Jarman, I owe a particular thank you. For my support workers who assisted the job of getting this work onto paper, thank you for your patience and commitment: Shuri Pentu, Edina Husanovic, and Malika Barakat. The invaluable contribution of Lorna Robinson and her many days as an unpaid volunteer in carrel number 11 in Humanities Reading Room 1 at the British Library is deeply appreciated. To Jeremy Sams, who first introduced me to Kurt Weill, I hope this work may be something in return. To Deborah Atherton, who has been a constant source of guidance, particular thanks must be given for her continual encouragement to me and this project. Douglas Hankin-West nurtured my early academic work, opened my eyes to the possibility of writing a PhD, and once I'd started
In an art gallery, a painting hangs on a wall. I stop, my eye called to the painting by the woode... more In an art gallery, a painting hangs on a wall. I stop, my eye called to the painting by the wooden rectangle that separates out the bit of the wall that is ‘the art’ from the rest. The frame does the work of telling me ‘look here, not there, look at this bit. This is the bit that is art’. Even the paintings without frames are framed by the blank wall around them, so that the wall becomes its own kind of frame: ‘here is art and there is not-art’. Frames make a transition between two spaces, and shape the way we look at the art in the middle. The musical, while plainly another kind of art to a painting, has been framed in various ways that shape how it is ‘seen’ and understood. These frames may be what we bring with us, our personal histories of encounters with musicals, perhaps what we might have performed in or listened to before. Popular histories may shape how we put musicals in order, or categorise them: glossy coffee table books and TV histories illustrated with beautiful pictures of the so-called Golden Age era of musical. We may share cultural references to the musicals ‘that were always on the telly when we were growing up’. But just as significantly, critical theories and academic approaches to the musical do this work too. They shape the way the musical is taught in colleges and universities, and ripple out of academia more broadly, impacting how the form is seen and understood in public discourse
Boublil and Schönberg’s Les Misérables, 2018
Troubling Traditions, 2021
Studies in Theatre and Performance, 2017
New Theatre Quarterly, 2017
The Disney Musical on Stage and Screen: Critical Approaches from 'Snow White' to ‘Frozen', 2017
ed. by George Rodosthenous (Bloomsbury Methuen Drama)
Theatre Topics, 2020
It is 2018, and I am sitting in the Neptune Theatre, Halifax, Canada. I’m watching the Canadian p... more It is 2018, and I am sitting in the Neptune Theatre, Halifax, Canada. I’m watching the Canadian premiere of The Color Purple directed by Kimberley Rampersad (the first time the show has been directed by a black woman). It is the first ever positive representation of my own sexuality that I have seen in the form which I have spent almost two decades studying, researching and writing about. As I see the character of Shrug Avery (Karen Burthwright) delight in the fluidity of her own sexual desire, a desire above and beyond gender, it feels like a space has been made. I’m crying but it’s complicated. Joy? Sadness? Recognition?
Arts, 2020
This article considers how André De Shields performance in Hadestown (2019), and the musicals Fun... more This article considers how André De Shields performance in Hadestown (2019), and the musicals Fun Home (2015) and A Strange Loop (2019) can be seen to respond to the present moment and argues that they disrupt heteronormative temporality through queer dramaturgy. It explores musicals that present queer performativity and/or queer dramaturgies, and addresses how they enact queer strategies of resistance through historical materialist critiques of personal biographies. It suggests that to do this, they disrupt the heteronormative dramaturgical time of the musical, and considers how they may enact structural change to the form of the musical. The article carries out a close reading of De Shields’ performance practice, and analyses the dramaturgy of Fun Home and A Strange Loop through drawing on the methodologies of José Muñoz and Elizabeth Freeman. It considers how they make queer labour visible by drawing on post-dramatic strategies, ultimately suggesting that to varying extents, thes...
Boublil and Schönberg’s Les Misérables, 2018
"One more dawn! One more day! One day more!" Did Les Misérables make you misera... more "One more dawn! One more day! One day more!" Did Les Misérables make you miserable? Or did it inspire you? When Sarah Whitfield was a teenager, her Dad frequently embarrassed her with his love of this musical above all others. So, after he was diagnosed with late stage cancer, Whitfield set out to find out why this musical meant so much to him and to its worldwide following. In this new book, she asked her Dad and 350 other people how they felt about this musical, exploring people’s personal connections with the show. In the middle of some of the hardest moments in family life, Whitfield explores how the musical might help us deal with some of our most difficult experiences and give us hope for when ‘tomorrow comes’.
Studies in Musical Theatre, 2016
This article contextualises the working processes of musical theatre composers, revealing their w... more This article contextualises the working processes of musical theatre composers, revealing their work to be profoundly immersed in collaborative practices. Several recent publications have destabilised the authority of the author figure, by addressing the practicalities of referring to Broadway musicals as the work of one or two creative figures: Dominic McHugh's recent exploration of the work that post-Second World War Broadway musical theatre composers do reveals a network of interactions between the composers and amanuenses, orchestrators, and vocal arrangers. (2015) Even within this framework Weill is seen to be unlike other Broadway composers, since he does much of this work himself. This article proposes that the term 'Broadway composer' is unhelpful in fully understanding what Weill and others like him actually do, beyond putting notes on a page. The article lays out Weill's actual working practices; collaboration in proposing new projects, the pre-production and rehearsal process, utilising music after publication across different mediums, and his careful management of his own public reputation. Having done this, it calls for McHugh's paradigm to be extended much further in order to acknowledge what composition in Broadway musical theatre involveswriting Broadway musicals means necessarily being a composer-as-collaborator.
Studies in Musical Theatre, 2012
production). This article explores their production histories, considering the relationships to h... more production). This article explores their production histories, considering the relationships to historical events within both performance texts, and the intricate relationship between content and form in both cases. It briefly discusses the questions of place that impact upon both the performance texts and the material spaces of production and reception. Finally, it considers the relationship between these works and the 'imagined Broadway musical', in the context of what both pieces represent for musical theatre production in contemporary London. In this article I consider the very different journeys two new music theatre productions have made on their journey to London and investigate the consequences of their arrival (though I will attempt to refrain from stretching the SMT_5.3_Whitfield_305-314.indd 305 SMT_5.
A radically urgent intervention, An Inconvenient Black History of British Musical Theatre: 1900 -... more A radically urgent intervention, An Inconvenient Black History of British Musical Theatre: 1900 - 1950 uncovers the hidden Black history of this most influential of artforms. Drawing on lost archive material and digitised newspapers from the turn of the century onwards, this exciting story has been re-traced and restored to its rightful place. A vital and significant part of British cultural history between 1900 and 1950, Black performance practice was fundamental to resisting and challenging racism in the UK. Join Mayes (a Broadway- and Toronto-based Music Director) and Whitfield (a musical theatre historian and researcher) as they take readers on a journey through a historically-inconvenient and brilliant reality that has long been overlooked. Get to know the Black theatre community in London’s Roaring 20s, and hear about the secret Florence Mills memorial concert they held in 1928. Acquaint yourself with Buddy Bradley, Black tap and ballet choreographer, who reshaped dance in Bri...
Studies in Musical Theatre, Jan 1, 2012
London Road, a collaboration between documentary playwright Alecky Blythe, composer Adam Cork and... more London Road, a collaboration between documentary playwright Alecky Blythe, composer Adam Cork and director Rufus Norris, opened at the National Theatre in April 2011. Road Show, by Stephen Sondheim and John Weidman, directed by John Doyle, opened at the Menier Chocolate Factory in July 2011 (a transfer of the 2008 New York production). This article explores their production histories, considering the relationships to historical events within both performance texts, and the intricate relationship between content and form in both cases. It briefly discusses the questions of place which impact upon both the performance texts and the material spaces of production and reception. Finally, it considers the relationship between these works and the ‘imagined Broadway musical’, in the context of what both pieces represent for musical theatre production in contemporary London.
My thesis abstract: The aim of this thesis is to critically examine Weill’s negotiation of Americ... more My thesis abstract: The aim of this thesis is to critically examine Weill’s negotiation of American cultural industries and his collaborative practice in making musicals there. It addresses the influence of the earlier, now discredited, concept of “Two Weills,” which has engendered an emphasis on identity within the current literature. It proposes that Weill scholarship has been further constrained by problematic perceptions of Weill’s position as both a European modernist composer and an exile in America. Each of these contexts suggests romanticised notions of appropriate behaviour for a composer, and of autonomy and separation from popular culture. This thesis examines how Weill troubles those notions by engaging with the musical, a so-called “middlebrow” form, with a disputed cultural value. It traces the reconsideration of the musical as a location for sociocultural analysis, highlighting David Savran’s requirement that approaches to the musical recognise the form’s material conditions of production. The thesis establishes its methodology building on Ric Knowles’s cultural materialist approach to contemporary performance. This enables Weill’s activities to be seen in their proper context: Weill’s negotiation of entry into American art worlds, the subsequent exchange of economic assets and Weill’s active management of his cultural capital through the media are followed for the first time, clearly revealing the composer’s working practices. This thesis suggests that Weill is a practitioner who consciously engages with American cultural industries. It addresses questions of authorship, demonstrating how Weill’s contribution can be understood within complex sets of agencies. It establishes how Weill can be seen through his own model of the ‘composer as dramatist’ and through Adorno’s depiction of the composer as a Musikregisseur.
Procedural audio has been the subject of significant contemporary interest, but prior examples in... more Procedural audio has been the subject of significant contemporary interest, but prior examples in relation to theatre sound are limited. After providing background to theatre sound and procedural audio, we introduce two artefacts, RayGun and INTERIOR, that explore issues around theatre sound. RayGun is an augmented prop prototype that uses sensor driven, procedurally generated and locally diffused sound to address prior deficiencies. INTERIOR reimagines Maurice Maeterlinck’s 1895 play Interior as an embedded, generative and largely procedurally generated audio play housed in a shortwave radio-like artefact. Intended to provide an accessible experience, the listener uses a single knob interface to scan through a soundscape of simulated radio stations and ‘find’ the play. We present some initial findings and conclude with suggestions for future work
Research chronicle/Research chronicle - Royal Music Association, Apr 15, 2024
This article explores how historical musicology can use computational methods within a minimal co... more This article explores how historical musicology can use computational methods within a minimal computing framework, recovering the performance histories of three migrant musicians, producing valuable new information about their careers. Líza Fuchsová, Maria Lidka, and Paul Hamburger all left Nazi-occupied Europe during the late 1930s and settled permanently in the UK. Fuchsová (1913-1977) was a Czech pianist who became an advocate for Czech musical culture as well as an important piano soloist; Hamburger (1920-2004) was an accompanist and teacher who left Vienna for London and became a senior figure in BBC radio and Guildhall professor; and Lidka (1914-2013) [Marianne Liedtke], was a violinist, orchestra leader and later Royal College of Music professor. Their careers have been underexplored, but machine-read digitised archives have opened new possibilities for finding and sorting what can seem like an overwhelming amount of performance data. This article uses a minimal computing led approach to demonstrate building a robust and accessible structure to interrogate performance data and establish performance histories. This article will demonstrate the value of this framework and will show how it can be applied to historical musicology work.
Routledge eBooks, Jul 17, 2018
My fellow PhD students at Queen Mary have always been supportive and generous with their ideas an... more My fellow PhD students at Queen Mary have always been supportive and generous with their ideas and time, special thanks to Nick Field, Bret Jones, Jim Reynolds and Sophie Leighton-Kelly. Particular thanks to the departmental staff, including Catherine Silverstone, Michael McKinnie and Bridget Escolme. For the disability department there and in particular the loyal encouragement of Paul Jarman, I owe a particular thank you. For my support workers who assisted the job of getting this work onto paper, thank you for your patience and commitment: Shuri Pentu, Edina Husanovic, and Malika Barakat. The invaluable contribution of Lorna Robinson and her many days as an unpaid volunteer in carrel number 11 in Humanities Reading Room 1 at the British Library is deeply appreciated. To Jeremy Sams, who first introduced me to Kurt Weill, I hope this work may be something in return. To Deborah Atherton, who has been a constant source of guidance, particular thanks must be given for her continual encouragement to me and this project. Douglas Hankin-West nurtured my early academic work, opened my eyes to the possibility of writing a PhD, and once I'd started
In an art gallery, a painting hangs on a wall. I stop, my eye called to the painting by the woode... more In an art gallery, a painting hangs on a wall. I stop, my eye called to the painting by the wooden rectangle that separates out the bit of the wall that is ‘the art’ from the rest. The frame does the work of telling me ‘look here, not there, look at this bit. This is the bit that is art’. Even the paintings without frames are framed by the blank wall around them, so that the wall becomes its own kind of frame: ‘here is art and there is not-art’. Frames make a transition between two spaces, and shape the way we look at the art in the middle. The musical, while plainly another kind of art to a painting, has been framed in various ways that shape how it is ‘seen’ and understood. These frames may be what we bring with us, our personal histories of encounters with musicals, perhaps what we might have performed in or listened to before. Popular histories may shape how we put musicals in order, or categorise them: glossy coffee table books and TV histories illustrated with beautiful pictures of the so-called Golden Age era of musical. We may share cultural references to the musicals ‘that were always on the telly when we were growing up’. But just as significantly, critical theories and academic approaches to the musical do this work too. They shape the way the musical is taught in colleges and universities, and ripple out of academia more broadly, impacting how the form is seen and understood in public discourse
Boublil and Schönberg’s Les Misérables, 2018
Troubling Traditions, 2021
Studies in Theatre and Performance, 2017
New Theatre Quarterly, 2017
The Disney Musical on Stage and Screen: Critical Approaches from 'Snow White' to ‘Frozen', 2017
ed. by George Rodosthenous (Bloomsbury Methuen Drama)
Theatre Topics, 2020
It is 2018, and I am sitting in the Neptune Theatre, Halifax, Canada. I’m watching the Canadian p... more It is 2018, and I am sitting in the Neptune Theatre, Halifax, Canada. I’m watching the Canadian premiere of The Color Purple directed by Kimberley Rampersad (the first time the show has been directed by a black woman). It is the first ever positive representation of my own sexuality that I have seen in the form which I have spent almost two decades studying, researching and writing about. As I see the character of Shrug Avery (Karen Burthwright) delight in the fluidity of her own sexual desire, a desire above and beyond gender, it feels like a space has been made. I’m crying but it’s complicated. Joy? Sadness? Recognition?
Arts, 2020
This article considers how André De Shields performance in Hadestown (2019), and the musicals Fun... more This article considers how André De Shields performance in Hadestown (2019), and the musicals Fun Home (2015) and A Strange Loop (2019) can be seen to respond to the present moment and argues that they disrupt heteronormative temporality through queer dramaturgy. It explores musicals that present queer performativity and/or queer dramaturgies, and addresses how they enact queer strategies of resistance through historical materialist critiques of personal biographies. It suggests that to do this, they disrupt the heteronormative dramaturgical time of the musical, and considers how they may enact structural change to the form of the musical. The article carries out a close reading of De Shields’ performance practice, and analyses the dramaturgy of Fun Home and A Strange Loop through drawing on the methodologies of José Muñoz and Elizabeth Freeman. It considers how they make queer labour visible by drawing on post-dramatic strategies, ultimately suggesting that to varying extents, thes...
Boublil and Schönberg’s Les Misérables, 2018
"One more dawn! One more day! One day more!" Did Les Misérables make you misera... more "One more dawn! One more day! One day more!" Did Les Misérables make you miserable? Or did it inspire you? When Sarah Whitfield was a teenager, her Dad frequently embarrassed her with his love of this musical above all others. So, after he was diagnosed with late stage cancer, Whitfield set out to find out why this musical meant so much to him and to its worldwide following. In this new book, she asked her Dad and 350 other people how they felt about this musical, exploring people’s personal connections with the show. In the middle of some of the hardest moments in family life, Whitfield explores how the musical might help us deal with some of our most difficult experiences and give us hope for when ‘tomorrow comes’.
Studies in Musical Theatre, 2016
This article contextualises the working processes of musical theatre composers, revealing their w... more This article contextualises the working processes of musical theatre composers, revealing their work to be profoundly immersed in collaborative practices. Several recent publications have destabilised the authority of the author figure, by addressing the practicalities of referring to Broadway musicals as the work of one or two creative figures: Dominic McHugh's recent exploration of the work that post-Second World War Broadway musical theatre composers do reveals a network of interactions between the composers and amanuenses, orchestrators, and vocal arrangers. (2015) Even within this framework Weill is seen to be unlike other Broadway composers, since he does much of this work himself. This article proposes that the term 'Broadway composer' is unhelpful in fully understanding what Weill and others like him actually do, beyond putting notes on a page. The article lays out Weill's actual working practices; collaboration in proposing new projects, the pre-production and rehearsal process, utilising music after publication across different mediums, and his careful management of his own public reputation. Having done this, it calls for McHugh's paradigm to be extended much further in order to acknowledge what composition in Broadway musical theatre involveswriting Broadway musicals means necessarily being a composer-as-collaborator.
Studies in Musical Theatre, 2012
production). This article explores their production histories, considering the relationships to h... more production). This article explores their production histories, considering the relationships to historical events within both performance texts, and the intricate relationship between content and form in both cases. It briefly discusses the questions of place that impact upon both the performance texts and the material spaces of production and reception. Finally, it considers the relationship between these works and the 'imagined Broadway musical', in the context of what both pieces represent for musical theatre production in contemporary London. In this article I consider the very different journeys two new music theatre productions have made on their journey to London and investigate the consequences of their arrival (though I will attempt to refrain from stretching the SMT_5.3_Whitfield_305-314.indd 305 SMT_5.
A radically urgent intervention, An Inconvenient Black History of British Musical Theatre: 1900 -... more A radically urgent intervention, An Inconvenient Black History of British Musical Theatre: 1900 - 1950 uncovers the hidden Black history of this most influential of artforms. Drawing on lost archive material and digitised newspapers from the turn of the century onwards, this exciting story has been re-traced and restored to its rightful place. A vital and significant part of British cultural history between 1900 and 1950, Black performance practice was fundamental to resisting and challenging racism in the UK. Join Mayes (a Broadway- and Toronto-based Music Director) and Whitfield (a musical theatre historian and researcher) as they take readers on a journey through a historically-inconvenient and brilliant reality that has long been overlooked. Get to know the Black theatre community in London’s Roaring 20s, and hear about the secret Florence Mills memorial concert they held in 1928. Acquaint yourself with Buddy Bradley, Black tap and ballet choreographer, who reshaped dance in Bri...
Studies in Musical Theatre, Jan 1, 2012
London Road, a collaboration between documentary playwright Alecky Blythe, composer Adam Cork and... more London Road, a collaboration between documentary playwright Alecky Blythe, composer Adam Cork and director Rufus Norris, opened at the National Theatre in April 2011. Road Show, by Stephen Sondheim and John Weidman, directed by John Doyle, opened at the Menier Chocolate Factory in July 2011 (a transfer of the 2008 New York production). This article explores their production histories, considering the relationships to historical events within both performance texts, and the intricate relationship between content and form in both cases. It briefly discusses the questions of place which impact upon both the performance texts and the material spaces of production and reception. Finally, it considers the relationship between these works and the ‘imagined Broadway musical’, in the context of what both pieces represent for musical theatre production in contemporary London.
My thesis abstract: The aim of this thesis is to critically examine Weill’s negotiation of Americ... more My thesis abstract: The aim of this thesis is to critically examine Weill’s negotiation of American cultural industries and his collaborative practice in making musicals there. It addresses the influence of the earlier, now discredited, concept of “Two Weills,” which has engendered an emphasis on identity within the current literature. It proposes that Weill scholarship has been further constrained by problematic perceptions of Weill’s position as both a European modernist composer and an exile in America. Each of these contexts suggests romanticised notions of appropriate behaviour for a composer, and of autonomy and separation from popular culture. This thesis examines how Weill troubles those notions by engaging with the musical, a so-called “middlebrow” form, with a disputed cultural value. It traces the reconsideration of the musical as a location for sociocultural analysis, highlighting David Savran’s requirement that approaches to the musical recognise the form’s material conditions of production. The thesis establishes its methodology building on Ric Knowles’s cultural materialist approach to contemporary performance. This enables Weill’s activities to be seen in their proper context: Weill’s negotiation of entry into American art worlds, the subsequent exchange of economic assets and Weill’s active management of his cultural capital through the media are followed for the first time, clearly revealing the composer’s working practices. This thesis suggests that Weill is a practitioner who consciously engages with American cultural industries. It addresses questions of authorship, demonstrating how Weill’s contribution can be understood within complex sets of agencies. It establishes how Weill can be seen through his own model of the ‘composer as dramatist’ and through Adorno’s depiction of the composer as a Musikregisseur.
Playhouse Plays Out invites you for a Chinese takeaway with a difference. An intimate theatrical ... more Playhouse Plays Out invites you for a Chinese takeaway with a difference. An intimate theatrical exchange is taking place in Tsangs Kitchen on Iffley Road. The Art Takeaway! is an interactive production where audience members choose from a menu of original art.
A distinctive selection of art pieces have been created by a wide variety of artists. Each work fits in a takeaway box and audience members who elect to take part in the performance go home with their piece of art at the end of the evening.
"'This is not the work of experts. This is the work of people making it up as they go along' [Phi... more "'This is not the work of experts. This is the work of people making it up as they go along' [Phil Smith]
Bring your clothes with holes in their pockets, with buttons missing, with tears and rips for mending and repair. Bring the clothes that you owe a favour to, a pair of baby tights you can't throw away. Tell their story and Sarah will mend your beloved object. The mending is part of its story, it's not the invisible mending of professionals. The stitching is a kind of scar, left behind to mark the beginning of the next chapter of the object's story. As she mends, the work is video projected like an operating theatre's careful stitching, her own scarred hands making tiny decisions with needle and thread."
Short clip of some of the work: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MqlcDGfLpNk
Kurt Weill's unfinished collaboration with librettists Bella and Sam Spewack and lyricist E. Y. H... more Kurt Weill's unfinished collaboration with librettists Bella and Sam Spewack and lyricist E. Y. Harburg is seen as key to his transition into American musical theatre, though no score remains. The traces of the collaboration that exist in the archive, mainly letters and newspaper clippings, present an intriguing possibility that Weill planned to explore the trauma of artistic exile in music theatre, through the tale of a German opera company separated from their music.
This paper will consider these incomplete archival fragments in the context of other 1930s musicals. This material analysis of external conditions of production and reception, established in contemporary performance studies, allows the reading of archival documents in a practical context, recovering documents that might otherwise be ignored. It raises questions about the interaction between the collaborative process and everything that happens outside of it, e.g. the way the project has been funded, the press attention it might receive before a note has even been written, or the contemporary expectations for casting. This approach will allow us to consider why this project was abandoned. As a methodology, it has general implications for studies of other musicals that are primarily represented in the archive. This paper will discover where this particular lost musical fits into our understanding of Weill's early years in America.
This paper proposes a new way of interrogating the archive, and using it to attempt reconstructio... more This paper proposes a new way of interrogating the archive, and using it to attempt reconstructions of specific moments of cultural production. It is possible to address historiographic concerns over the troubled position of the researcher, acting alone among dusty boxes which in themselves present dangerous and incomplete narratives, without abandoning archival research. Rather, this paper will argue that these incomplete traces of the artistic process can be considered within a framework of conditions of performance, valuing the archive as a viable location for the production of knowledge around a performance.
Kurt Weill's negotiation of entry into 1930s America, and the contemporary systems of production on Broadway will be used as a case study. The traces that remain of Weill’s early American collaborations will be considered within the framework of conditions of performance. This work is a specific extension of Ric Knowles’s materialist consideration of theatrical production and concurrent contexts of reception. While Knowles suggests these are a prerequisite to examining contemporary performance, this paper will extend them to consider the archive. Knowles’s methodology will be modified to consider the musical’s own conditions of performance, and the available evidence then re-contextualised.
The paper will demonstrate that by considering what is present and using the evidence of a collaborative process the archive itself can be revitalised. When considering the historic moment of performance, the fragments found in the archive are no longer static but instead active records of conditions of production.
Kurt Weill's exile from Germany to America and his subsequent success on Broadway has been portra... more Kurt Weill's exile from Germany to America and his subsequent success on Broadway has been portrayed as the act of a serious composer squandering his talent. Weill's journey from opera to musical theatre has left him outside of traditional musicology and theatre studies, since neither side knows quite what to do with this 'composer as dramatist'. The struggle to come to terms with why Weill would bother with the musical raises many questions about our understanding of the form. The question echoes the wider position of the musical itself in academia, how do we go about taking the musical seriously?
This paper will explore the legacy of cultural valuations of opera and the musical. The classical music canon has shaped the way all music is studied, and its influence is still with us when we talk of high, low and middlebrow. What does this actually mean for the beleaguered genre? Using the critical framework of David Savran, I will attempt to suggest a way forward for considering both Weill and the musical and for taking both seriously.
Royal Musical Association Research Chronicle, 2024
This article explores how historical musicology can use computational methods within a minimal co... more This article explores how historical musicology can use computational methods within a minimal computing framework, recovering the performance histories of three migrant musicians, producing valuable new information about their careers. Líza Fuchsová, Maria Lidka, and Paul Hamburger all left Nazi-occupied Europe during the late 1930s and settled permanently in the UK. Fuchsová (1913-1977) was a Czech pianist who became an advocate for Czech musical culture as well as an important piano soloist; Hamburger (1920-2004) was an accompanist and teacher who left Vienna for London and became a senior figure in BBC radio and Guildhall professor; and Lidka (1914-2013) [Marianne Liedtke], was a violinist, orchestra leader and later Royal College of Music professor. Their careers have been underexplored, but machine-read digitised archives have opened new possibilities for finding and sorting what can seem like an overwhelming amount of performance data. This article uses a minimal computing led approach to demonstrate building a robust and accessible structure to interrogate performance data and establish performance histories. This article will demonstrate the value of this framework and will show how it can be applied to historical musicology work.
This article contextualizes the working processes of musical theatre composers, revealing their w... more This article contextualizes the working processes of musical theatre composers, revealing their work to be profoundly immersed in collaborative practices. Several recent publications have destabilized the authority of the author figure, by addressing the practicalities of referring to Broadway musicals as the work of one or two creative figures: Dominic McHugh’s recent exploration of the work that post-World War II Broadway musical theatre composers do reveals a network of interactions between the composers and amanuenses, orchestrators, and vocal arrangers. Even within this framework Weill is seen to be unlike other Broadway composers, since he does much of this work himself. This article proposes that the term ‘Broadway composer’ is unhelpful in fully understanding what Weill and others like him actually do, beyond putting notes on a page. The article lays out Weill’s actual working practices; collaboration in proposing new projects, the pre-production and rehearsal process, utilizing music after publication across different mediums, and his careful management of his own public reputation. Having done this, it calls for McHugh’s paradigm to be extended much further in order to acknowledge what composition in Broadway musical theatre involves – writing Broadway musicals means necessarily being a composer-as-collaborator.
(2016) Studies in Musical Theatre, 10. 2 (June): 163–76. doi:10.1386/smt.10.2.163_1
in The Disney Musical on Stage and Screen: Critical Approaches from 'Snow White' to ‘Frozen'. ed.... more in The Disney Musical on Stage and Screen: Critical Approaches from 'Snow White' to ‘Frozen'. ed. by George Rodosthenous (Bloomsbury Methuen Drama)
in Twenty First Century Musicals: From Stage to Screen ed. by George Rodosthenous (Routledge)
A radically urgent intervention, An Inconvenient Black History of British Musical Theatre: 1900 -... more A radically urgent intervention, An Inconvenient Black History of British Musical Theatre: 1900 - 1950 uncovers the hidden Black history of this most influential of artforms. Drawing on lost archive material and digitised newspapers from the turn of the century onwards, this exciting story has been re-traced and restored to its rightful place. A vital and significant part of British cultural history between 1900 and 1950, Black performance practice was fundamental to resisting and challenging racism in the UK.
Join Mayes (a Broadway- and Toronto-based Music Director) and Whitfield (a musical theatre historian and researcher) as they take readers on a journey through a historically-inconvenient and brilliant reality that has long been overlooked. Get to know the Black theatre community in London's Roaring 20s, and hear about the secret Florence Mills memorial concert they held in 1928. Acquaint yourself with Buddy Bradley, Black tap and ballet choreographer, who reshaped dance in British musicals - often to be found at Noël Coward's apartment for late-night rehearsals, such was Bradley's importance. Meet Jack Johnson, the first African American Heavyweight Boxing Champion, who toured Britain's theatres during World War 1 and brought the sounds of Chicago to places like war-weary Dundee. Discover the most prolific Black theatre practitioner you've never heard of, William Garland, who worked for 40 years across multiple continents and championed Black British performers. Marvel at performers like cabaret star Mabel Mercer, born in Stafford in 1900, who sang and conducted theatre orchestras across the UK, as well as Black Birmingham comedian Eddie Emerson, who was Garland's partner for decades.
Many of their names and works have never been included in histories of the British musical - until now.
This critical and inclusive edited collection offers an overview of the musical in relation to is... more This critical and inclusive edited collection offers an overview of the musical in relation to issues of race, culture and identity. Bringing together contributions from Cultural, American and Theatre Studies for the first time, the chapters offer fresh perspectives on musical theatre history, calling for a radical and inclusive new approach. By questioning ideas about what the musical is about and who it for, this groundbreaking book retells the story of the musical, prioritising previously neglected voices to reshape our understanding of the form.
Timely and engaging, this is required reading for undergraduate and postgraduate students of Musical Theatre. It offers an intersectional approach which will also be invaluable for theatre practitioners.
Routledge, 2018
"One more dawn! One more day! One day more!" Did Les Misérables make you miserable? Or did it in... more "One more dawn! One more day! One day more!"
Did Les Misérables make you miserable? Or did it inspire you? When Sarah Whitfield was a teenager, her Dad frequently embarrassed her with his love of this musical above all others. So, after he was diagnosed with late stage cancer, Whitfield set out to find out why this musical meant so much to him and to its worldwide following.
In this new book, she asked her Dad and 350 other people how they felt about this musical, exploring people’s personal connections with the show. In the middle of some of the hardest moments in family life, Whitfield explores how the musical might help us deal with some of our most difficult experiences and give us hope for when ‘tomorrow comes’.