Breaking into Song: Why You Shouldn’t Hate Musicals (paperback)
£7.79
A sharp, funny and passionate collection of essays asking why musicals divide us, what makes the form so powerful, and how new musical theatre can become braver, stranger and better.
Buy the eBook here
Breaking Into Song: Why You Shouldn’t Hate Musicals
by Adam Lenson
A passionate, provocative and funny collection of essays about
musical theatre’s most misunderstood form
Why do some people love musicals with evangelical intensity, while others recoil the moment anyone starts singing?
In Breaking Into Song, director, dramaturg and musical theatre specialist Adam Lenson takes on theatre’s most divisive genre with curiosity, wit and a genuine desire to open the form up. Written for musical lovers, musical sceptics, students, practitioners and theatregoers who want to think more deeply about the stage, this lively collection of essays asks what musicals are, why they matter, and how they might become stranger, braver and better.
From the politics of musical theatre to the problem of repetition, from the relationship between musicals, opera, video games and comic books to the question of whether musicals can ever be cool, Lenson explores the extraordinary possibilities of a form too often dismissed, misunderstood or reduced to cliché.
This is not a book that asks you to like every musical. It asks you to stay open to what musicals can do.
Breaking Into Song is both a defence of musicals and a challenge to them. Lenson writes as someone who loves the form enough to interrogate it properly: its habits, limitations, commercial pressures, emotional force and untapped potential.
Sharp, accessible and full of big ideas, the book is ideal for:
- musical theatre students
- drama and theatre studies courses
- directors, writers, composers and dramaturgs
- performers developing new musical theatre
- academics and researchers
- theatregoers who love musicals
- sceptics who want to understand what the fuss is about
Whether you are making musicals, studying them, reviewing them or trying to work out why they provoke such strong reactions, Breaking Into Song offers a generous and thought-provoking way in.
“This book is a fascinating cri de coeur and made me question everything I think about musicals”
Alan Cumming“A passionate and cogently argued call to arms and a very enjoyable read”
Lyn Gardner“This book is really brilliant. If you care about/enjoy/work in/struggle with/want to understand/have concerns for the state of musical theatre, it is essential reading. Hugely recommended”
Howard Goodall“I would advise anyone who… hates musicals… to read this book”
Musical Theatre Review
Across a series of short, energetic essays, Adam Lenson asks fundamental questions about musical theatre:
- What makes a musical a musical?
- Why do musicals polarise audiences?
- Why has a form so full of possibility become associated with such narrow expectations?
- How can artists make better, bolder new musicals?
- What can audiences do to stay open-minded?
The result is a playful, rigorous and highly readable book about what happens when words are no longer enough and characters break into song.
Contents include
The Wound
On Hating Musicals
Cash Machines
Musicals and Comic Books
Musicals are Political
When Words Are No Longer Enough
Collaboration
Time and Memory
Photocopying a Photocopy
I’m Not a Genre, Not Yet a Medium
Audiences
Musicals and Video Games
Can Musicals Ever Be Cool?
Musicals and Opera
Musicals Cost Too Much
Autobiography
Build it and They Will Come
Making Space
| Format | paperback |
|---|---|
| Dimensions | 198 x 129 mm |
| Extent | 188 |
| ISBN | 9781914228025 |
| Publication date | 02 September 2021 |
Adam is a London based Director, Dramaturg and Creative Technologist.
A major focus of his work is the development of new musicals. Shows developed to world premiere production include PUBLIC DOMAIN (Southwark Playhouse and Vaudeville Theatre), THE FABULIST FOX SISTER (Southwark Playhouse), STAGES (VAULT Festival), SHIFT+ALT+RIGHT (Online). WASTED (Southwark Playhouse), SUPERHERO (Southwark Playhouse), THE SORROWS OF SATAN (Brocket Hall & Tristan Bates Theatre), LOCK AND KEY (Vault Festival), THE LEFTOVERS (National Tour).
Other Directing includes: THE RINK (Southwark Playhouse), THE STORM (Helios Collective/ENO), 35MM (The Other Palace), VANARA (Hackney Empire), WHISPER HOUSE (The Other Palace), ORDINARY DAYS (Finborough Theatre and Trafalgar Studios), LITTLE FISH (Finborough Theatre), SONGS FOR A NEW WORLD (St James Theatre, 20th Anniversary Production), THE DISGRACED (English Theatre Frankfurt), DARK TOURISM (Park Theatre), SEE WHAT I WANNA SEE (Jermyn Street Theatre), INTO THE WOODS (Royal Central School of Speech and Drama), REEL LIFE (Folio Theatre, ETT, Pound Arts, Ustinov Theatre Bath).
His solo show BUT WHAT IF YOU DIE? which he wrote and performed was developed as part of Camden People’s Theatre Starting Blocks residency and made its world premiere there in 2022.
Since 2017, Adam has curated and hosted SIGNAL; a series of in-person and online concerts of artist driven new musical theatre which has held over twenty events that have platformed the work of over a hundred writers. He has workshopped and supported the development of over fifty musicals.
In 2020 he cofounded THEATRICAL SOLUTIONS, a creative technology company that specialise in digital solutions for live theatre and events.
https://adamlenson.com/about
