Theatre History Podcast # 2
Like a Boss: 1940s Musicals and the “Boss Lady” with Maya Cantu
One of the main reasons that theatre's so thrilling and vital is that, unlike movies or TV shows, it involves a live performance that happens right before our eyes. However, that same quality also makes it almost impossible to recapture that live experience, and it can make studying the history of the theatre difficult.
This podcast will try to help listeners understand and learn more about theatre history across a myriad of time periods and cultures. It features interviews with academics, artists, and others who are working to rediscover forgotten stories from the theatrical past and to create new art and scholarship from them.
In this episode, Maya Cantu discusses how the musicals of the 1940s saw the emergence of a new figure: the “boss lady.” She explains how characters like Liza Elliott from Lady in the Dark and Hildy Esterhazy from On the Town came to embody the sense that, at least during World War II, women were taking on roles that allowed them to be strong and independent. However, when the war ended there was a reaction against these boss ladies, as men returning from the war sought to reassert their patriarchal privileges. Maya is a member of the drama faculty at Bennington College and the Dramaturgical Advisor for the Mint Theatre Company.
Links:
- To learn more about Maya and her work, click here: www.mayacantu.com
- More information about Maya’s book, American Cinderellas on the Broadway Stage: Imagining the Working Girl from Irene to Gypsy
- Listen to another interview where Maya discusses the Cinderella figure in a wider cultural context.
You can subscribe to this series via Apple iTunes or RSS Feed or just click on the link below to listen:
This podcast aims to introduce listeners to the artists, scholars, and archivists who are working to bring the history of performance to life. We hope that, by listening to this show, you’ll learn about exciting new performances, fascinating books, and valuable repositories of knowledge, all of which will help you better understand theatre’s history.
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