Virtuosity and the Musical

In some circles, musical virtuosity is much deprecated as merely self-advertising technical showiness that detracts from the music being played, the song being sung, the nuance and subtlety of the act of artistic communication. In musical theatre, where performers have to be the ‘triple threat’, showing excellence in acting, dancing, and singing, this would seem to be a constant danger. But what is the role of virtuosity in musical theatre? Could it be of cultural, artistic or political value? This illustrated talk will rehearse some ideas about the pleasures and values of virtuosity, touching on matters like narrative, excess, aesthetic autonomy, integration theory, formalism, utopianism, and tap dancing.

Bio: My research has most often focused on post-war and contemporary British theatre. 1956 and All That (Routledge, 1999) is a rereading of the ‘theatrical revolution’ thought to have taken place at the Royal Court around Look Back in Anger. My short monograph Theatre & Globalization argues for the theatre as a source of cosmopolitan resistance to globalization. The book is part of Theatre &, a new series of books opening up the latest thinking in theatre and performance research. I have also published Modern British Playwriting 2000-2009, The Suspect Culture Book, and Contemporary European Theatre Directors. My current book project is Naturalist Theatre: A New Cultural History for Routledge, a large-scale interdisciplinary monograph exploring the emergence of Naturalist theatre in the last third of the ninteenth century. I am also a playwright, and my work has been performed across Britain and in Europe and America, on stage and radio. In 2014-17 I was lead writer on Emile Zola: Blood, Sex & Money for BBC Radio 4, an epic 25-hour adaptation of Zola's 20-volume 'Rougon-Macquart' novel sequence. It is the most ambitious adaptation BBC radio have ever produced (and is therefore quite likely the most ambitious radio adaptation in the world). I designed, with colleagues in English, two new joint degrees in Creative Writing, whose first students graduated in 2007. With other colleagues, I introduced degrees in Philosophy, whose first students graduated in 2010. As Head of the Department of Drama, I introduced the joint degree with Dance, whose first students graduated in 2017.I've chaired numerous platforms for the National Theatre, Lyric Hammersmith, and Manchester Royal Exchange, am a contributing editor for New Theatre Quarterly and Associate Editor of Contemporary Theatre Review. You can find out more at my website: http://www.danrebellato.co.uk. Please note: this is a personal website and all opinions are mine and do not necessarily reflect those of Royal Holloway or the Department of Drama and Theatre.