This book argues that the digital revolution has fundamentally altered the way musicals are produced, followed, admired, marketed, reviewed, researched, taught, and even cast. In the first hundred years of its existence, commercial musical theatre functioned on one basic model. However, with the advent of digital and network technologies, every musical theatre artist and professional has had to adjust to swift and unanticipated change. Due to the historically commercial nature of the musical theatre form, it offers a more potent test case to reveal the implications of this digital shift than other theatrical art forms. Rather than merely reflecting technological change, musical theatre scholarship and practice is at the forefront of the conversation about art in the digital age. This book is essential reading for musical theatre fans and scholars alike.

TikTok Broadway: Musical Theatre Fandom in the Digital Age explores how TikTok has revolutionized musical theatre fandom and democratized musical theatre fan cultures and spaces. The book argues that TikTok has created a new canon of musical theatre thanks to the way virality works on the app, expanding musical theatre into a purely digital realm that spills into other, non-digital aspects of U.S. popular culture.

Global in scope and featuring thirty-five chapters from more than fifty dance, music, and theatre scholars and practitioners, The Routledge Companion to Musical Theatre introduces the fundamentals of musical theatre studies and highlights developing global trends in practice and scholarship. Investigating the who, what, when, where, why, and how of transnational musical theatre, The Routledge Companion to Musical Theatre is a comprehensive guide for those studying the components of musical theatre, its history, practitioners, audiences, and agendas. The Companion expands the study of musical theatre to include the ways we practice and experience musicals, their engagement with technology, and their navigation of international commercial marketplaces. The Companion is the first collection to include global musical theatre in each chapter, reflecting the musical’s status as the world’s most popular theatrical form. This book brings together practice and scholarship, featuring essays by leading and emerging scholars alongside luminaries such as Chinese musical theatre composer San Bao, Tony Award-winning star André De Shields, and Tony Award-winning director Diane Paulus. This is an essential resource for students on theatre and performance courses and an invaluable text for researchers and practitioners in these areas of study.

This book introduces readers to the widespread phenomenon of how social media platforms such as YouTube, Twitter, and TikTok become an extension of long-standing aspects of musical theatre engagement. Although casual observers may dismiss social media's import, social media has revolutionized the field of musical theatre since the early days of Web 2.0 with spaces such as AOL, LiveJournal, and Myspace. Now, as social media continues to grow in relevance, the nuanced ways in which digital platforms influence musical culture remain ripe for study. Social Media in Musical Theatre moves beyond viewing social media merely as a passing fad or a space free from critical engagement. Rather, this volume takes a serious look at the critical role social media play in musicals, thus challenging how social media users and musical theatre-makers alike approach digital spaces. This book introduces the relationship between musical theatre and social media in the 21st century as well as methods to study social media's influence on musicals through three in-depth case studies organized around marketing on YouTube, fan engagement on Twitter, and new musical development on TikTok.