Theater History and Mysteries
The deepest dives you can find anywhere into the history and backstory of the great musical productions. Dense content...for people who aren't. And, I’ll never miss an opportunity to pursue any mystery, bizarre coincidence, improbable event, or supernatural suggestion along the way because, in the words of Dirk Gentley, it is all connected.
You can contact me directly at theaterhistorypodcast@gmail.com
Released every other Tuesday.
Music by Jon Bruschke and Andrew Howat, arranged, performed, and recorded by Andrew Howat.
Check out the interview on Musical Theater Radio, episode 404: https://www.musicaltheatreradio.com/podcast
Theater History and Mysteries
What does Hadestown say about race and gender? (Hadestown 6/8, episode 35)
Are there crazy connections in the world? In 1984 I was a 4th-year college debater at Cal. State Fullerton with aspirations of finishing in the top 16 in the country when my partner quit. In January I was paired up with a sophomore, and we needed an argument nobody else was talking about…right when a change of power in Egypt put Hosni Mubarak in the geopolitical spotlight. We based our entire argument strategy on how various government actions might mess up that transition and the global impact it would have. In our sophomoric tone, common to 20-year-old males and strangely tolerated in the world of competitive academic debate, we labelled the argument “You hose Hosni.” The basic claim was that the regime was fragile, and easily disrupted.
In what must have been very close to that same year, Anais Mitchell – who would go on to write Hadestown – had this experience, which she recounted in her book “Working on a song” – In college I studied abroad in Cairo, Egypt. May Arabic Lit professor was an older woman with dark eyeliner who took it upon herself ot introduce leftist, bohemian values to a generate of distracted young Egyptians. She barely concealed her disdain for then-President Hosni Mubarak”
Both the Arabic Lit professor and our undergraduate drivel were proven right by history! In February of 2011, Mubarak was ousted from power following violent protests…
Unlike Hosni Mubarak, both Anais Mitchell and, in a far less spectacular way, I understood that the world was changing. The future would not belong to autocrats, but to those who explored the emerging concerns of that bohemian, mobile-phone using generation: Race, gender, the environment, and the working class. This is where the revolution lies, and this is where it’s dangerous to light the match. So we’ll use of phone flashlights as we look at race, gender, and the environment as the issues play out in this episode of THM.
Rosalind Henderson
https://medium.com/@rosalindhenderson_54321/toxic-masculinity-a-leading-cause-of-our-environmental-issues-d2e9d6fb58bf