Guggenheim Q & A: Music Theatre Prof. Stacy Wolf

The Daily Princetonian spoke with theater professor Stacy Wolf about her recently received Guggenheim Fellowship and her work in theater, both with the University and outside of it.

The Daily Princetonian: What motivated your interest in musical theater? How has your relationship with the field changed throughout your career?

Stacy Wolf: Well, like most of us who are musical theater scholars, I started as a kid performer. I would say one hundred percent of us started as children performers, although sometimes it takes people a little while... And I returned to this childhood love after I had finished my dissertation. And at the same time, musical theater was just, just, just starting as an academic field. It’s a very new field. I would be considered the first generation of scholars. And before my generation, there were people who wrote — who did coffee table books, or who wrote books that were compendiums of lyrics, or that were hagiographies or biographies. But in terms of scholarly analysis of the form, in terms of taking the script of a musical as seriously as you would a play by Shakespeare or Ibsen, or taking the music as seriously as you would the music of Beethoven, or the dance as seriously as you would the dance of Balanchine, that’s a very new occurrence. So when I started working on this, like others of my close friends and colleagues now, some people just thought it was ridiculous that we would engage in serious study because the musical is entertaining, it’s commercial, it’s an industry, and it’s not meant to be taken seriously. But of course it’s the most serious form of American culture and it’s one of the two forms of culture that are truly American, the other being jazz. So that’s how I got started in that, and I wrote two books that brought together my interests in feminism and sexuality studies with musical theater. And as I was finishing — or part of the way through — my second book and writing stuff and editing stuff, I was struck by what I always knew but never thought to study, which is the importance of the amateur in the sustenance of musical theater in America and the importance of community theaters and high schools and summer camps and churches and Jewish community centers, and how crucial these venues are for the continuation of the musical. So when I finished my last book I turned my attention in this direction.

DP: Can you briefly talk about your project “Beyond Broadway: Four Seasons of Amateur Musical Theatre in the U.S.,” for which you were awarded the Guggenheim Fellowship?

SW: It actually takes a year in the life of amateur musicals, and every chapter looks at a different venue or a different setting for the musical, or a different person who’s a key figure in the amateur musical theater scene. I travel around the country and visit different places. It’s ethnographic in method…I’m not an ethnographer because I’m not an anthropologist, but it relies on interviews, it relies on observation, it’s very much in the weeds of how funding operates and how it’s put together, how kids who have never seen a play learn to perform. There’s a chapter that’s about Disney’s engagement with the amateur musical theater scene, which is hugely expanded, and Disney has a big philanthropic wing that is doing a lot of really amazing stuff. So some of it’s about licensing and industry and the people who support and profit from amateur musical theater, and then some of it is about kids, and some of it is about adults — why people do musical theater for fun.

DP: You have written on theater at varying levels, from Broadway to regional to high school theater. What has that process been like, and is it still an ongoing one? Where has your research taken you?

SW: It is an ongoing one. I would say I am substantially through the research but I still have some more visits to make and people to talk to and material to investigate…I honestly cannot remember exactly where it started. I think I just was interested in the amateur and interested in people who are involved in musical theater for fun and who are not intending to be professional performers. And part of it was kind of the “People Magazine” biography where everyone who’s on Broadway talks about how they started by being in a high school musical or they started by being in a community theater musical, and I thought that was really interesting. But I wasn’t so interested in tracking their journeys or even looking at Broadway and talking about how the people get here. I was interested in the where people start and the fact that most people don’t make it to Broadway and don’t become big stars and still get great pleasure and meaning and community building and expressiveness, and for kids, a lot of skill building through participation. It’s this funny form that brings together music and theater and dance and speech, and it’s so weird, and people still love it. I think the other thing that I feel about this book very strongly is that it’s an advocacy project. It’s absolutely meant to show the importance of the arts, specifically theater, and more specifically, musical theater in people’s everyday lives. Because, across the country, in every city and every town, there is some kind of musical theater activity happening, no matter what people’s race, socio-economic situation, geographical location, there’s musical theater happening everywhere. And it means something to people. So that’s kind of where it starts...One of my chapters is about musical theater at girls’ Jewish summer camps in Maine. And they’re not religious camps and the plays are not religious, but most of the campers who go there — and these are not camps that identify explicitly as Jewish, but they have some Jewish cultural components to them — almost all the campers are Jewish, the directors are Jewish, they were founded by Jewish women in the early 20th century. And at all of these camps, musical theater has been part of the camp since the they were founded in 1916, before there actually was what we understand as musical theater. So in the days of vaudeville, they were doing vaudeville shows, they were doing other kinds of theater. And as soon as musical theater arrived on the Broadway scene, it immediately showed up at these camps. And they do a musical in five days. Every single girl in the camp does a musical every summer and sees six or seven other musicals every summer, and so it’s a very interesting process of acculturation into learning the cannon of the musical, and they also do musical theater. These are not performing arts summer camps, these are camps where girls swim, play soccer, and do arts and crafts, and they do a musical. And I just thought it was absolutely fascinating that this is a part of what camp is about and that doing the the musical completely corresponds with the other values at camp about girl power and community building and bravery...One of my favorite — this was a camp I went to see and they were doing “Sister Act”, which featured Whoopi Goldberg in the movie version and is about nuns. There were all these Jewish girls playing nuns, and it was just fantastic. It was hilarious, it was so great, and they loved it. It really bonded this group, and the girls in the audience who start at the age of seven loved it, and it was really fascinating.

DP: What is your response to the current threat of the National Endowment for the Arts potentially losing funding?

SW: Well, like all of my colleagues — my academic colleagues and my artist colleagues — and I would say... it’s absolutely horrifying and completely absurd. First of all, because barely any money goes to the support of the arts and humanities in this culture anyway. I don’t remember what the statistics are, but it’s a tiny percentage…It’s ridiculous. And I think we eliminate the arts at our peril. People have to have venues for expressiveness, people have to have places to experience art from the spectator’s perspective. It’s what makes us human, it’s what makes us empathetic, it’s what brings people together — especially theater being together in the same space, breathing the same air as other people who are not like you. It’s so alarming and shocking that they would be suggesting this. It’s terrible. And there’ve been... so many studies of how much children, especially children in underserved areas, benefit from the arts and benefit from theater. I was actually just at a conference last weekend and the president of the theater Education Association was quoting statistics on how much every kid, and especially kids from underprivileged backgrounds, benefit from the arts.

DP: With lots of recent and upcoming changes to the Lewis Center for the Arts, such as the new building opening Fall 2017 and the music theater certificate being offered for the first time this year, what are your hopes for the future of theater at the University?

SW: I am so excited and hopeful about our future. The Program in Music Theater already has had a lot of interest and a number of students who signed up for the certificate, even in its very first year. I’m so excited to move to the new building. I think proximity to the Department of Music...will be fantastic for us … Also, I feel like we are attracting a more diverse pool to the theater program and to music theater. This year we did a production of “Hairspray” which we were really excited about with a whole new concept and a wonderfully diverse cast … In my ideal world, every single student at Princeton would take an arts class. As many many many would take a theater class, and so many would take a musical theater class. I would love for every Princeton student to cross my door, but I’m not sure that’s going to happen. But certainly I hope everyone crosses the doors of the Lewis Center.

DP: Is there anything else you would like to add?

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SW: Well I think just that I’m so honored and privileged to get a Guggenheim … Obviously it’s wonderful to get a financial award to support the research, but it’s enormously legitimizing for a field that’s really — you know, it’s about the amateur. It’s in some ways the opposite, it is the opposite of high art. It’s really about the “people.” And I’m very honored and humbled when I look at the other people I know who got Guggenheims or my colleagues in this year’s class, it’s very, very humbling, and I just feel so thrilled that this project will be supported by the Guggenheim Foundation.