Conference Agenda

What might we see and hear on the Black musical theater stage circa 1900? A complex array of performances that defy easy categorization, where Black artists negotiated the terms of the still-popular tradition of blackface minstrelsy by performing both in and out of blackface makeup, at times utilizing the power of inversion through whiteface makeup, and at other times leveraging the novelty of other ethnic, class, and gender impersonations. This paper argues that Black women developed strategic approaches to negotiate their place within the white- and male-dominated minstrel tradition—approaches that remain underacknowledged in the existing scholarship. It contributes to a growing body of work that highlights Black women’s resistance to racist and sexist performance conventions, despite the societal and legal constraints placed upon them (Sampson 1980; Riis 1989; Chude-Sokei 2005; Brown 2008; Abbott and Seroff 2009; Asare 2024; Morrison 2024).

Drawing from media housed in several archival collections, this paper recovers the careers of the Black women who starred in productions by the impresario John William Isham. These shows, including the Octoroons (1895-1900) and Oriental America (1896-1899), marked important departures from the minstrel show by featuring Black women in starring and supporting roles and by altering elements of the established tripartite structure of the minstrel show. I argue that Isham’s traveling companies served as crucial sites for Black women’s stage training, creative expression, and community building. While there is scant information on many of the women associated with these shows, I suggest that the archive can still tell us much about their roles in early musical theater, about Black women’s collective efforts to change minstrel-derived forms of representation, and about the forms of resistance, agency, and pleasure that the tropes of minstrelsy may have offered to Black women performing on the musical stage at the turn of the twentieth century.

This talk considers the intersection of two discourses that have tended to occupy distinct registers: a largely journalistic discussion of race and casting in opera and musical theater; and scholarly explorations of operatic dramaturgy that have rarely addressed race. As the implications of both race-conscious casting and so-called Regietheater have increasingly come to dominate discussions of staging practices, this talk suggests one reason why these discourses have mainly talked past each other.

My focus is two well-reviewed box office hits from the last decade: Les Indes Galantes at the Opéra National de Paris (2019), with choreography by Bintou Dembélé; and Cats: “The Jellicle Ball” (2024), at the Perelman Arts Center in New York City, choreographed by Arturo Lyons and Omari Wiles.

While Rameau’s opéra-ballet and Andrew Lloyd Webber’s musical share little in common, these productions pursued similar strategies in staging the works: both centered choreography drawn from a variety of Black-identified dance traditions (krump and hip hop in the Rameau; voguing and other queer ballroom styles in Jellicle Ball), and both cast performers from the communities aligned with those dance traditions.

Many critics offered dramaturgical readings of these stagings stressing interpretive interventions: Dembélé’s choreography for Les Indes Gallantes highlighted the opera’s racialized depiction of “savages,” just as the reframing of Cats as a queer ballroom competition offered a compelling narrative the original musical lacked. Yet statements by the dancers, directors, and choreographers stress something else entirely: representation. For both productions, interviews with artists focus not on their “reading” of a problematic opera or musical, but their own bodily presence on stage, and the cultural and political significance of the dance traditions they and their bodies represent. These were not works to be interpreted but raw material to be inhabited and possessed.

Taking seriously these perspectives suggests not simply that artists may view their work differently than critics; more importantly, the artists’ insistence on embodied representation enables a more capacious understanding of dramaturgy, and the limits—as well as possibilities—of “interpreting” a canonical work on stage.

This paper examines the transformation of the Wicked Witch of the West across various Oz performances both on stage and on screen, focusing on how her character reflects changing cultural attitudes toward feminine power, labor, and race. From her depiction in L. Frank Baum's The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1900) to the labor-centric themes in the 1903 Broadway musical, and the exploitative sweatshop in the 1978 film adaptation of The Wiz, the Wicked Witch embodies societal anxieties about women's agency, economic systems, and racial otherness. The analysis culminates with Cynthia Erivo's portrayal in the 2024 film adaptation of Wicked, highlighting a contemporary reimagining that intertwines race and feminine power.

This study employs a multidisciplinary approach, drawing from archival research and textual analysis. Sources discussed include manuscript scores and sheet music, recordings, press reviews, performer interviews, and other archival resources from the Billy Rose Theatre Collection at the New York Public Library, the Library of Congress Music Division, and the Baum Collection in the Syracuse University archives. These resources provide a rich context for understanding the historical, cultural, and performative dimensions of the Wicked Witch's evolution.

By situating the Wicked Witch within the broader context of musicological studies, this paper highlights her role as a pivotal figure in exploring the intersection of race, gender, and labor within musical theater. From 1900 to 2024, the Wicked Witch shows us how musical theater reflects and shapes societal attitudes while it contributes to ongoing conversations about representation and gender, race, and power.