Watching my college’s reunion cabaret this year, I was struck by how old fashioned and bourgeois so much of the musical theatre repertoire being presented was. The songs that folks had brought to perform were things like “Stars and The Moon” by Jason Robert Brown and selections from Grey Gardens. The material was similarly conventional when I was a student. At the time it seemed normal to sing songs about middle class marriage and imbalanced heterosexual relationships, even within the hotbed of an alter...
Watching my college’s reunion cabaret this year, I was struck by how old fashioned and bourgeois so much of the musical theatre repertoire being presented was. The songs that folks had brought to perform were things like “Stars and The Moon” by Jason Robert Brown and selections from Grey Gardens. The material was similarly conventional when I was a student. At the time it seemed normal to sing songs about middle class marriage and imbalanced heterosexual relationships, even within the hotbed of an alternative progressive culture. It seems odd to me now. Why did our songs and our theatre not reflect the world that was happening on our college lawn or in our classrooms?
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This is Episode 459
Song: Stripes
Image is of a production of Annie at Four County Players.
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