Includes bibliographical references (pages 239-255) and index.
Contents:
Part one. Madness in the mind. "Make a date with a great psychoanalyst..." : gazing inward in the dual golden age -- "Make up your mind! Make up your mind!" : the neurotic interior and the dynamic unconscious in the 1940s and beyond -- Part two. Madness in society. "There are heroes in the world..." : psychiatric activism, antipsychiatry, and political consciousness -- "To dream the impossible dream..." : communities of madness in the musicals of the long sixties -- "Is that just disgusting?" : filth, madness, and the city in Sweeney Todd and other musicals -- Part three. Madness in the brain. "What a lovely cure!" : staging the interior in the new age of diagnostic psychiatry -- "Sing a song of forgetting..." : listening to the unconscious in Next to normal -- Conclusion. Contemporary visions of madness as depth theater,
Summary:
Theatermakers in the United States have long been drawn to madness as a source of dramatic spectacle. During the Broadway musical's "golden age," creative teams used the currently in-vogue psychoanalytic ideas about mental life to construct troubled characters at odds with themselves and their worlds. As the clinical and cultural profile of madness transformed over the twentieth century, musicals continued to delve into the experience of those living with mental pain, trauma, and unhappiness. Seriously Mad offers a dynamic account of stage musicals' engagement with historically significant theories about mental distress, illness, disability, and human variance in the United States. By exploring who is considered mad and what constitutes madness at different moments in U.S. history, Aleksei Grinenko shows how, in attempts to bring the musicals closer to "highbrow" sophistication, theater dramatized serious medical conditions and social problems. Among the many Broadway productions discussed are "Next to Normal," "A Strange Loop" "Sweeney Todd," "Man of La Mancha," "Dear World," "Anyone Can Whistle," "Gypsy," "Oklahoma!," and "Lady in the Dark."
This resource is supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act as administered by State Library of Iowa.