One of the most vexing questions in scholarship that deals with popular music and/or musicals is the strange bifurcation that divides these into separate and even antagonistic realms, despite their strong connections, as practices, throughout the intertwined histories of popular music and stage music in US American culture, from Show Boat and The Jazz Singer to Hamilton, from Tin Pan Alley to Hip Hop and beyond. This one-day symposium brings together scholars and practitioners from both popular music studies and musical theater studies to present a diversity of perspectives on this bifurcation and discuss how the artificial boundary between these two areas might be better understood and managed.
Panelists: Daniel Goldmark (Case Western University), Elizabeth Wollman (CUNY Graduate Center), Raymond Knapp (UCLA), Oliver Wang (CSULB), Amy Coddington (Amherst University), Masi Asare (Northwestern University), Jake Johnson (Oklahoma City), Nina Eidsheim (UCLA), and Shana Redmond (UCLA)
Schedule
12pm-1:15pm: Concert featuring students from UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television
Selections from Bells Are Ringing, Between the Lines, Edges, Waitress, and world premiere musical Rebel Genius
Performers:
Walker Brinskele, Fernando Carsa, Naama Shaham, Sara Gilbert, Michael Wells
1:30pm-3pm: Panel 1 - Vocal Embodiment, moderated by Mitchell Morris
Panelists: Masi Asare, Jake Johnson, Nina Sun Eidsheim, Shana L. Redmond
3pm-3:30pm: Coffee Break
3:30pm-5pm: Panel 2 - Theatricality and Authenticity, moderated by Robert Fink
Panelists: Elizabeth L. Wollman, Daniel Goldmark, Raymond Knapp, Amy Coddington, Oliver Wang