Sitrep 7: March 16, 2025: Musicals

It didn’t really take much convincing for me to agree with Stacy Wolf that the gesamtkunstwerk quality of the American musical should earn musical theatre a (pleasurable) space in canon-constructed university courses, even in disciplines outside of theatre. My earliest experiences with theatre of any kind, as a spectator and performer, involved musical theatre, and those formative moments likely have inspired the inclusion of musical theatre into my pedagogy. When I taught film studies, I gave space to “the musical film” as one film’s canonical categories, and I certainly include musicals in my Intro to Theatre and Acting courses.

That being said, I also found Hye Won Kim’s article less relatable and at times problematic. Not because she doesn’t raise valid points about representation and creating spaces for diverse performers and narratives in commercial theatre (and the troubled history of the canon in this regard), but more because I’m left uncertain about her aims. Calling her article an advocation for theatrical plenitude (152), she neglects to articulate whom she is advocating to. Though what she is advocating for at first seems clear: “We need more Asian and Asian American narratives on Broadway – good, bad, or mediocre” (154), Kim muddies this a bit by shifting focus throughout the article to the myriad sins of the industry. She covers the hypersexualization of Asian characters in American musicals (154), the broad othering and orientalism in American musical theatre (155), the miniscule job market for female Asian American actors (154), the racist policies of actor’s equity (156), the culturally insensitive choices Asian/American Actors are forced to comply with or resist if they are cast in a canonical Broadway production of the past (159), and finally, New York Times’ reviewer Jesse Green’s “casual racism” (162). All of these are individually important discussions, and perhaps they do cohere into at least painting a documented portrait of a bigger systemic issue. But in this firehose approach, it is unclear to me who Kim is hoping will fix this. Everybody, I guess?

Kim goes on to demonstrate how KPop is the antithesis to so many of these abhorrent practices, and I get the sense that she wishes it could have been both an antidote and blueprint for future productions. At the very least, her disappointment at its early closure is palpable, though she does very little to explore why it closed. Only at the very end of the article, and only in a footnote lamenting the choice of the show’s title and by extension implicating the show’s marketing choices as misleading (168), does she explore any other reason for the show’s closure then systemic racism. It’s certainly plausible that this was a cause, or even the cause, but not exploring other possibilities is problematic for a few reasons. First, it allows those who might be responsible or complicit in perpetuating systemic issues in the Broadway ecosystem (audiences and producers alike) to look for other reasons that the show closed and, after finding them, summarily dismiss the bigger problems Kim is attempting to highlight. Secondly, she creates an implicit demand that productions who advocate for and demonstrate social justice in their processes should be exempt from theatrical criticism, not to mention the normal strictures of Broadway production – namely that the show has wide enough commercial appeal (and quality?) to make its producers money, which, if racism was the reason for the show’s closure, would implicate audiences as much as it does the producers or Jesse Green.  In her opening paragraph, Kim points out KPop’s boundary-breaking feats, thus equating a litany of firsts with qualification for belonging to the Broadway oeuvre. She then doubles down on this assertion by explaining that mediocrity signifies privileged status (168), closing off discussion of any kind of theatrical qualification such as, I don’t know, say…story? Criticisms made in other reviews (https://newyorktheater.me/2022/11/27/kpop-on-broadway-review/)? Production elements? Or more broadly speaking, what constitutes theatre? What should? How did the constraints of the Broadway stage hurt the successful form of the immersive off-Broadway production?  

As mentioned, Kim does many things in the article, and I particularly admire her discussion of the ways KPOP progressed many troubling normative practices in past musicals featuring Asian narratives. I found the section on the writer’s decision to refuse to homogenize the complex dialect diversity within the cast especially evocative (167-168). However, at least one of her arguments in the article is an argument about cannon, specifically the current Broadway cannon, and what qualifies a production to assume a place of privilege within it.  For Kim, that privilege should be granted on moral qualifications (demonstratable inclusive practices and appropriate representation) and racial qualifications (being Asian/American), but everything else is taken off the table. Broadway could certainly benefit by greater inclusion (of a LOT of things), but the overall omission by Kim of any other flaws in KPOP as a piece of theatre hurts her argument, and feels like the article is closing a discussion on cannon rather than opening it.