"Can Anybody See?": Masculinities in Musical Theatre and Post-Secondary Musical Theatre Training

Twenty first-century post-secondary students demonstrate a dissonance with the musical theatre canon and current training methods. My research invites post-secondary students to contribute as critical co-investigators, utilizing discussion group research to engage my suppositions. I employ Raewyn Connells theory of hegemonic masculinity and adapt her model of gender relations into a framework for the examination of masculinity in musical theatre. My examination of the vocal scores of Rodgers & Hammersteins Oklahoma! and Pasek & Pauls Dear Evan Hansen provide diachronic case studies, making visible the persistence of hegemonic ideals in musical theatre. This research demonstrates that hegemonic masculinity has been sustained in popular musicals across time and is maintained in current post-secondary musical theatre training. I suggest a revised pedagogical approach based on Lucy Greens model of dialectical musical experience to build toward an engaged musicology for musical theatre.