The Rock Musical: From Creation to Curation (2015–2020)

Abstract

In a post-#Me-Too/Black Lives Matter landscape, the gender- and race-politics of the Golden Age of rock have increasingly come under interrogation. Hip-hop challenging rock’s long-standing hegemony constitutes a sociological as well as a musical shift, with a production such as Andrew Lloyd Webber’s School of Rock (2015) perhaps seeming hopelessly old-fashioned in comparison with Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton from the same year. This article’s close and contextualized readings of four post-Hamilton jukebox rock musicals debate two principal issues. First, the extent to which the jukebox musical is fit for purpose: creative enough to repurpose rock’s cultural patrimony for an enriching night in the theatre. Second, how and why the curation practices of the rock musical reproduce or challenge the intersectional vectors of gendered and racial oppression, which render the genre problematic.