‘Returning from afar, from always, from without’: Ageing Female Vocalities in musical theatre

Abstract

This Ph.D. thesis embarks from the observation that musicals, this widely popular, multi-faceted genre of theatre, are predominantly youth-centric and that the existing roles for ageing women have been significantly overlooked by scholars and musical theatre literature as a research topic. In response to this, this Ph.D. examines perceptions and dramaturgical representations of ageing female physiovocalities in Anglophone musicals (Broadway and the West End) through an interrogation of the artistic and creative presence of the ageing female performers’ vocality in musical theatre. This study is situated at the intersections of interdisciplinary voice studies and musical theatre studies, while also drawing on performance and theatre studies (particularly in relation to age and gender), cultural studies (intersectional feminism), age studies, queer studies, and music studies. Its case studies examine roles for ageing women in the musicals 'A Little Night Music', 'Sunset Boulevard', 'Follies', 'Calendar Girls', 'Billy Elliot' and 'In the Heights' and develop original discussions on (voiced) female ageing as it intersects with class, regionality, geopolitical positionality, ethnicity, and sexuality. Within each case study, voice is examined through an interdisciplinary lens that considers close reading of the scores, performance analysis, archival research into the creation and reception of each role, interviews with performers and creatives, alongside critical theorisation. The study foregrounds the ageing female voice and observes how musical theatre functions as an ambivalent medium within which creative visibility / audibility intertwine with marked vocalic bodies. It proposes the conceptual framework of the ageing female voice as pharmakon in musicals. Through this concept I argue the ageing female voice oscillates between progressive and regressive elements embodied and envoiced within each role. Based on this concept, the thesis proposes a taxonomy with categories of pharmaka, designed to facilitate a deeper comprehension of how these ageing female vocalities have been constructed and staged in original productions and revivals, and how the ageing female voice has been presented as an aural/bodily condition of undecidability in the dramaturgies of such characters.