How do I make new music theatre that is feminist?

Is a feminist music theatre possible? Are feminist musicals possible? What is a feminist dramaturgy in a music theatre context? These questions are at the core of my research, which takes a practice-based approach to developing a theoretical framework and practical, dramaturgical interventions to enable consciously feminist music theatre making and writing.

Though scholarly feminist readings of musicals exist, the majority of which are queer-feminist readings led by scholar Stacy Wolf, these consist of readings and interpretations of existing musicals. I argue practice-based approaches are essential and required if this largely mimetic, totalising form with a deeply problematic history is to be reinvented or reinvested by feminist makers.

By introducing the processes I am undertaking in creating a new musical, called The 100 Year Revue, this paper will present a brief overview of some of the ways my practice-based research is developing theoretically, politically and dramaturgically feminist work. The 100 Year Revue, intends to critically respond to the problematic ways female bodies have been historically implemented in commercial, populist musicals and offer a feminist alternative. Drawing largely on Sara Ahmed’s (2006) work on Queer Phenomenology, I apply an intersectional feminist lens to interrogate the normative dramaturgical orientation towards female bodies and body parts in musicals and unpack the processes through which reductive, objectifying gendering can occur.